Wednesday, August 22, 2012

To die for


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.