the image. I believe the power of those has everything to do with the fact that the horizon begins and ends outside the containing sheet. A lesson learned and hopefully not forgotten: the frame might contain the mark but not the gesture."Native Wit, p 141.
Bio from John Leech Gallery: As an artist, McCahon was truly experimental, navigating a wide range of artistic styles over the years from regional realism and cubism to abstraction and abstract expressionism and these influences are very much represented in the group of works on display. Particularly evident is the bold formal style for which McCahon is renowned where the language of landscape is reduced to simple yet sensuous geomorphic forms found in works such as Untitled (Northland), 1962 and Untitled (Landscape), 1963. Northland became the subject of several major series - most notably the Northland Panels, 1958 which is now held in the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. In Untitled (Northland), 1962, the chief formal interest comes from exploiting the relationship between cloud and hill forms. Works from this period can also be seen as a precursor to such series as the Landscape Theme and Variation paintings from 1963, where the curved semi-circular hills become a recurring symbol of both the landscape and Christ.
Throughout McCahon's oeuvre there is a continual reference to the landscape which is often enlisted as a spiritual metaphor. "Once more it states my interest in landscape as a symbol of place and also for the human condition. It is not so much a portrait of a place as such but is a memory of a time and experience of a particular place ... the actual valley I saw was like a geological diagram, only overlaid with trees and farms. In my painting all this has been swept aside to uncover the structure of the land." (Colin McCahon quoted in Introducing Our New Zealand Artists: Colin McCahon, Betts and Ritchie 1985.)
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