Presentation on Colin McCahon by Dr Peter Simpson

The director and staff of Pātaka Art + Museum warmly invite all Pātaka Friends to hear a fascinating illustrated presentation on the life and work of the late, great Colin McCahon by leading McCahon scholar, writer, and curator Dr Peter Simpson at 2pm , Friday 30 April.
Colin McCahon (1919–1987) was New Zealand’s greatest twentieth-century artist. Through landscapes, biblical paintings and abstraction, the introduction of words and Māori motifs, McCahon’s work came to define a distinctly New Zealand modernist idiom.
“I’ve had the good fortune to attend many lectures and presentations by Dr Peter Simpson over the last 20 plus years. His speaking voice is an appealing, gravelly baritone. He makes his points succinctly, with the occasional rhetorical flourish or the odd wry chuckle. His recall in these moments, for dates, or for the joy and fitful enmity of friendship is uncanny. On the subject of Colin McCahon (1919 – 1987) Simpson could be described as a walking computer of New Zealand art history.” – Hamish Coney
Dr Peter Simpson is a former associate professor of English at the University of Auckland. He is the author of numerous critically acclaimed books including Colin McCahon: The Titirangi Years, 1953–1959 (AUP, 2007) and Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch 1933–1953 (AUP, 2016). He has also curated three significant exhibitions of McCahon’s work. He received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (non-fiction) in 2017.
Peter Simpson is also the author of the recent and most comprehensive two-volume biography on McCahon published to date. The first volume, ‘Colin McCahon: There is Only One Direction, Vol. I 1919–1959′, was published in 2019 to coincide with the Centenary of the artist’s birth. The second, ‘Colin McCahon: Is this the Promised Land?: Vol.2 1960-1987’, was published the following year.
Each volume includes over 300 illustrations in colour, with a generous selection of reproductions of McCahon’s work (many never previously published), plus photographs, catalogue covers, facsimiles and other illustrative material.
Copies of both volumes of Dr Simpson’s McCahon biography will be available for inspection and purchase from Pātaka’s main reception desk following Dr Simpson’s presentation.