Muriwai: Necessary Protection

Colin McCahon, Muriwai: Necessary Protection, 1972, synthetic polymer paint, paper mounted on hardboard, 710x1090mm. Collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, courtesy McCahon Research and Publication Trust.

Judy Millar, 'Untitled 2018'

Judy Millar, Untitled, 2018, acrylic on vinyl, 500x250cm. 

Judy Millar

Auckland Based Painter – The Inaugural Recipient of the McCahon House Artists’ Residency in 2006, New Zealand Representative at the Venice Biennale in 2009.

Muriwai: Necessary Protection is a small painting. By McCahon’s standards, a very small painting. But when I stood in front of it for the first time I knew I was standing before a panorama, before an epic landscape. Every time I think of this painting it grows in scale. The achievement of the epic in this small work makes it a triumph of painting.

Rocks formed as black blocks, waves as black squiggles, birds black flicks. Right here McCahon gives us the magic of painting. Brush-mark as description, description as brush-mark, our imagination and reality colliding.

We can marvel at the ease with which McCahon shows us the difference between the movement of a wave and the movement of a bird by the simple movement of his brush. Marvel at the ease with which he forms space between the two skewed black rectangles – rectangles that are neither rock nor geometry but both at the same time.

And then the luminosity. Painted in black and white this is a painting filled with light and colour. How can one suggest colour when painting with black and white. This is one of the mysteries of McCahon’s work. In black and white he goes full spectrum. It is as if the rainbow is in there, squeezed between the presence and absence of light.

In this small painting McCahon gives the West Coast of Aotearoa to us anew. Gives us its essence in the solidity of rock and the more temporal life of wind-driven wave and bird. In this work we are able to see the forces at play and the feelings those forces can evoke. The space between the rocks is threatening, foreboding and yet it pulls us in. Those who are drawn to our island’s western shores know these contradictory emotions well.

Having lived myself on Auckland’s west coast for the last 35 years I understand these contradictory moods. As a painter who lives and works high on a cliff overlooking the Tasman Sea I am confronted every day with the wilds of the coast. Here the world folds and unfolds in a constant if inconsistent rhythm.

In my daily painting practice I rely on the particularity of this place - the constantly shifting light and the movements of wind and sea - to drive me forward. A painter cannot stay still in her work. Chance and necessity plays out in a constantly shifting thought process, and so the work and the surroundings come to reflect and echo one another.

Blazing sunset colours, wind tortured forms and writhing seas were not intentionally put into my work but have entered into it because they cannot be avoided. Scale shifts and an open pictorial space have come about in my work as I too search for the meeting point of our imagination and our seen ‘reality’.

McCahon took the majesty of Aotearoa and used it to infuse his work with grandeur. During the last few years I have travelled frequently to exhibit my work in Europe. When I return, the landscape appears ever more epic. To find ways to synthesise the energy of this remarkable place into a painted image is a task worth doing.

CONNECTING CULTURAL LEGACY WITH CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE

Index
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Bridget Riggir-Cuddy
The House Protects the Dreamer
Naomi McCleary
Kauri
Séraphine Pick
Northland Panels
Brian Sweeney
The view from the top of the cliff
Rudi Fuchs
North Otago Landscape
Rex Butler
I Considered All the Acts of Oppression
Donna McDonald
The Fourteen Stations of the Cross
Harold Jones
Muriwai no.7
Ted Spring
On Building Bridges
Areez Katki
The Three Marys at the Tomb
Rosanna Raymond
Jet Out
Rufus Knight
Waterfall
Megan Tamati-Quennell
Black Landscape
Nick Mitzevich
Victory over Death 2
Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern
Victory over Death 2
The Governor General The Rt Hon Dame Patsy Reddy
Gate III
Grant Banbury
I Paul
Sir Bob Harvey
Dark Landscape
Young Old Girls Christchurch Girls’ High
North Otago Landscape 19
Sophie Bannan
Van Gogh - poems by John Caselberg
Linda Tyler
Urewera Triptych
Emily Karaka
Tangi. Muriwai
Robert Gardiner
Are there not twelve hours of daylight
Thomas Crow
Are there not twelve hours of daylight
Jude Rae
Victory over death 2
Brent Harris
The Family
Cora-Allan Wickliffe
15 Drawings Dec '51 to May '52
Salome Tanuvasa
Landscape
Yona Lee
Landscape theme and variations (series B)
David Kirk
Kaipara
Priscilla Pitts
Fourteen Stations of the Cross
Ruth Watson
This day a man is
Tessa Laird
Keep New Zealand Green
Nell
East window
Nicola Farquhar
Kauri trees
Hon Grant Robertson
Otago Peninsula
Jane Macknight
Untitled (North Otago Landscape)
Karen Walker
Titirangi
Wystan Curnow
The Green Plain
Philip Clarke
Necessary Protection (IHS)
Mary Kisler
A candle in a dark room
Ayesha Green
I AM
Matthew O'Reilly
Muriwai
Bettina Bradbury and Kararaina Rangihau
A poster for the Urewera no. 2
Al Keating
A Grain of wheat
Cushla Dillon
Entombment (after Titian)
Hamish Coney
Here I give thanks to Mondrian
Stephen Wainwright
As there is a constant flow of light we are born into the pure land
Sue Gardiner
Landscape theme and variations (series A)
Robert Leonard
Numerals
Judy Darragh
Clouds 1
John Coley
AS THERE IS A CONSTANT FLOW OF LIGHT WE ARE BORN INTO THE PURE LAND
Shannon Te Ao
Ka pōraruraru ahau. I am troubled.
Helen Beaglehole
GATE III
Ralph Paine
Jump E9
Judy Millar
Muriwai: Necessary Protection
Fiona Pardington
Waterfall
C.K. Stead
All mortals are like grass
Gretchen Albrecht
As there is a constant flow of light we are born into the pure land
Martin Edmond
Cross (1959)
Lisa Reihana
Urewera mural
Peter Simpson
Jet out to Te Reinga
Christina Barton
Gate III
Dame Jenny Gibbs
I Considered All the Acts of Oppression
Zoe Black
Ruby Bay
Jim Barr and Mary Barr
Oaia and clouds
Vivienne Stone
Tomorrow will be the same but not as this is
Kate Sylvester
Northland Panels