"Once the painter was making signs and symbols for people to live by," Colin McCahon wrote, "now he makes things to hang on walls at exhibitions." Filling his paintings with kauri and cliffs, the candle and the T, McCahon sought to develop signs and symbols for our modern world. In this book, leading McCahon scholar Gordon H. Brown presents viewers with new insight into the meanings of Colin McCahon's paintings. Tracing McCahon's life and work, from his student days at King Edward Technical College in Dunedin, through learning from Toss Woollaston, and on to his adult life working at the Auckland Art Gallery and at the Elam art school, Brown analyses key aspects of the paintings: the role of the bible, the idea of the promised land, the use of words and numbers. And Brown gives us fresh insight into McCahon the man, leading us into McCahon's various studios, his involvement with the theatre, and his life at home. A trusted friend of Colin McCahon from 1952 until the artist's death in 1987, Gordon Brown draws on that personal relationship and on many years writing, thinking and talking about the meanings of McCahon's paintings to offer a vivid new portrait of our most distinguished artist.

Author Biography

A longtime friend of Colin McCahon, Gordon H Brown is an artist and freelance writer on a wide variety of New Zealand art topics. He has a Diploma in Fine Arts from Canterbury School of Art and between 1960 and 1977, he worked in various significant libraries and art galleries. The author of the classic Colin McCahon: Artist and An Introduction to New Zealand Painting 1839-1967, he was awarded the OBE in 1980 for services to Art History and has a Victoria University of Wellington lecture series named after him.