Necessary Protection

COLIN McCAHON

The real Far North of New Zealand is unlike any other part of the land. I can't talk about it, I love it too much. From the reservoir hill above Kaitaia a flat and swampy land runs south to Ahipara and to the beach and further south a vast sandhill ends ninety mile beach, gold and rounded by the wind - some scrubby manuka.

COLIN McCAHON
The Care of Small Birds 1975
730 x 925 mm
(photograph by Charters and Guthrie Associates)

Up there is like standing on a moon. Way down below is the sea and the edge of the world and the beach running to nothing and to Te Reienga Wairua: us and a lovelyold lady spaniel leaping about with joy - and nothing, nothing more - and further north when you get there - all sculpted by wind and rain its there - you bury your heart, and as it goes deeper into the land you can only follow. It's a painful love, loving a land, it takes a long time. I stood with an old Maori lady on a boat from Australia once - a terribly rough and wild passage. We were both on deck to see the Three Kings - us dripping tears. It's there that this land starts.

The very bones of New Zealand were there, bare yellow clay-slides running to the sea, and black rock.

COLIN McCAHON
Moby Dick 1972
oil on canvas, 870 x 1752 mm.

Up north the manuka hangs fiercely to the land form. It is a protective skin, it protects the land it needs and the land gives it life and a season of red and pink and white flowering. Take the manuka and the land is lost. This situation is the one I refer to in all the paintings and drawings that belong to the family I call Necessary Protection.