One of the greatest pieces of good fortune
to come our way was back in the 1980s when Gretchen Albrecht and James Ross
offered to lend us a work by Colin McCahon while they were out of the country. It
was the number two written in white on a black landscape under a scumbled white
sky (in the crudest sense of the colour wheel) painted on hardboard. It has
since gone into another private collection but you can see it here.
There was a great story attached to this or
a similar painting. Apparently McCahon was in New Plymouth teaching an art
class when one of the participants asked him what this painting was about.
McCahon, a straight talker, said, “It’s about the number two” where upon the questioner,
rather taken aback, said, “Is that all?” McCahon looked up and after a pause
replied, “How much more do you want?” Hard to argue with that.
So when we saw this dramatic bit of
painting above a letterbox in Kilbirnie we were thinking of Colin McCahon and
the number two.
