Jet Out
Jet Out, 1973, conté on paper. 280 x 358 mm. Collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Purchased 1996 with funds from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery Society, courtesy McCahon Research and Publication Trust.
Rosanna Raymond, Here2There, SaVAge K'lub Portrait, photography by Pati Solomona Tryell, 2019. 2nd Honolulu Biennial, Hawaii
Rosanna Raymond
Musing on McCahon –Black Crosses for a White God
I imagine you protecting yourself
in the blackness you painted
Not the blackness birthed in the void
Nor one that comes with the night
Your blackness is wounded...permeated with the sin of white men
Shaped like a cross, embalming native landscapes
with borrowed words
I am not interested in another
pious man grappling with god
Was it truth you searched for...or reformation
I doubt it was forgiveness
Faith a bitter mix of
malice mixed with light
Maybe you could of taken solace in the flesh
Sung songs of joy to the prophets, to the mountains
The birds could of joined in
Fly you say....fly...where
you gave them no wings
Just more blackness and a shaft of light for them to fall into
My gods watched you
In your joy
In your truth
In your drunken esctacy
Maybe they were singing to you, is this what you heard
As they scooped up your soul
escorting you up north
So they could hang you in the trees
scrape the flesh off your bones
taking away your blackness
Who knows...maybe I’ll see you in Hawaiiki
Or just think of you when I walk down the beach
