A painting for Uncle Frank

Painted in 1980, A painting for Uncle Frank is one of Colin McCahon's final works. It is a meditation on the nature of religious faith, and the difficulty of sustaining it in an increasingly secular age.

Uncle Frank's religious instruction
'Uncle Frank' was the painter Toss Woollaston's uncle, Frank Tosswill, whom McCahon met in Nelson during the 1940s. Frank was a religious zealot who attempted to direct the lives of those around him. McCahon was evidently impressed by his religious certainty, and also by the wall size posters that he produced, containing biblical texts for study. A painting for Uncle Frank can be seen as 'a sort of belated, back-handed compliment' to Frank, according to McCahon's biographer, Gordon H Brown.

Landscape, journeys, spirituality
A Painting for Uncle Frank looks back in several senses. The two iconic landmarks represented in the picture - Taranaki on the left, and Ahipara on Ninety Mile Beach on the right - recall McCahon's earlier landscape paintings. The text is largely drawn from the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament. It also includes a brief note in which the artist evokes his own personal journey: 'ahipara - here I come back home where I started from'. Ahipara is where Māori believe the souls of the dead gather before their final journey to Cape Rēinga (the 'leaping place' of spirits), a journey that McCahon had referred to in earlier works such as the 'Jet Out' series of the early 1970s.

Late works
As a painter, teacher, critic, and curator, McCahon has had an unparalleled impact of New Zealand art. Te Papa holds sixty-four of his works.