The Five Wounds of Christ no. 2

As New Zealand’s most celebrated twentieth-century painter, Colin McCahon gained an international reputation for his intense investigations into the tension between pictorial form and mutable expressions of the self, place and the universe. The Five Wounds of Christ no. 2 is characteristically embedded with Christian elements, which can be optically perceived in multiple ways. On one level the subject can be read as flat and abstract: the white cross of the crucifixion floating against an infinite black, representing the cosmos and supported by five presences or angels. On another level, it transforms into an expansive local vista. The grey strip along the bottom defines a landscape plain, one that extends from Auckland to a high cliff edge, where it is met by Muriwai Beach, immediately escalating the work into the realm of the sublime. Here, the brilliant white cross materialises in the sky above the artist’s environment as a symbolic protective force in the world.

Tracey Lock, Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture