Inscription
McCahon / Dec 53 (brushpoint, b.l.)

One of the strongest themes throughout Colin McCahon’s oeuvre is the kauri tree. The artist moved to Auckland from the South Island in 1953. Settling with his family in the West Auckland suburb of Titirangi, McCahon found himself in an environment surrounded by native bush. The bush had many kauri trees, and they were to become his key subject matter over the next few years.

Discussing works from McCahon’s 1953 Kauri series, writer Peter Simpson describes, “[…] a sense of interiority, the absence of horizon and the emphasis on the verticality of the kauri trunks extending to the top edge of the picture - the slim 'rickers of the regenerating forest around the McCahons' home.” This painting, one of several from 1953 with the title Kauri, has the compositional qualities Simpson speaks of. It also has one foot firmly planted in cubist abstraction, which interested McCahon greatly.

Cubism may have been part of what he admired in the work of Louise Henderson. He saw more of the Paris-born artist’s paintings once based in Auckland, and he wrote enthusiastically about them on several occasions. Henderson had travelled to Paris to study under notable cubist painter Jean Metzinger, and her work reflected that period of learning. Simpson states, “The excitement McCahon felt for Henderson's work was partly in feeling brought close to the original discoveries of Picasso, Braque and Gris in Paris half a century earlier.”

The influence of cubism is also apparent in McCahon’s work from this period, though what McCahon did was not ‘cubism’ per se. Rather, he created work that responded to cubist modes of image making while engaging his local environment.

Kauri features a restrained palette in cool greys and warmer tones of yellow ochre. The diagonal weave of the composition offers a visual impression of dense bush, tree trunks, and the dynamic dance of light through foliage. The work clearly has a cubist inflection, though it retains some of the primordial wildness of New Zealand’s native bush. Kauri is a distinctive example of McCahon’s painting from a key period in his career.