{"id":4734,"date":"2019-01-29T15:55:14","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T20:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=4734"},"modified":"2019-01-29T15:55:20","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T20:55:20","slug":"landscape-a-metaphor-for-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=4734","title":{"rendered":"Landscape – A Metaphor For Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Late last year we spend a few days with family in New Zealand, and on our last morning we visited the Auckland Art Gallery – NZ’s largest public gallery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was this group of paintings by Colin McCahon, and several others by him in other galleries -as he is New Zealand’s most important modern artist, it’s no surprise the Auckland Art Gallery has several in it’s collection. This group was on show:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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10\/14 Stations Of The Cross <\/em>by Colin McCahon. Pillars in the gallery prevented me photographing the whole suite end to end (L-R).


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On first sight, I instinctively knew these paintings depicted landscape. I studied physical geography and geomorphology, and as a user of very diagrammatic representation of landscape features<\/a> myself, this group of paintings brought me to a screeching halt. I must confess, in my appalling Australian ignorance, I hadn’t heard of the artist, Colin McCahon. Let me plead living on the other side of the world from Australia for 27 of the last 30 years – if I’d lived closer, maybe … <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though I taught for a couple of years at a Christian Brothers College (Kalgoorlie, WA, 1973-4) and really loved it, I found it never seemed to matter to everyone that I was not Roman Catholic; so until I came to write this post I’d never really studied beyond my basic understanding of the Stations of The Cross<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCahon’s life (1919-1987) was complex and troubled, but he is acknowledged to have been New Zealand’s most important modern artist, with a large, well documented body of work<\/a> including abstract, figuration, landscape and overlay of text. Q: – Are painful experiences necessary for someone to become a great artist<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These paintings made me think of the work of an American textile artist, Lisa Call<\/a> , formerly of Colorado, who 2013 moved to a new life in New Zealand. In 2015, during a return visit to Colorado, she staged an exhibition, “Endless Horizon: 14000 Feet to Seal Level” of new works in Denver. Visiting CO at the time, and being very familiar with her work, I was taken with her totally new colour palette and the adaptation of her signature lines across patches of colour to form a ‘diagrammatic’ style of evocative abstract landscapes inspired by her new country. To read more about influences she sees on her work, visit https:\/\/lisacall.com <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late last year we spend a few days with family in New Zealand, and on our last morning we visited the Auckland Art Gallery – NZ’s largest public gallery. There was this group of paintings by Colin McCahon, and several others by him in other galleries -as he is New Zealand’s most important modern artist, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[474,472,476,475],"class_list":["post-4734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-ausckland-art-gallery","tag-colin-mccahon","tag-diagrammatic-landscapes","tag-lisa-call-nz-endless-horizon-landscapes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-1em","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4734"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4744,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734\/revisions\/4744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}