Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland Purchased by current owner, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, 1996

Previously in the collection of Jeffrey Harris, artist

Record Number cm000956 The Colin McCahon Database & Image Library www.mccahon.co.nz

1971, the year this work was produced, was a time of change for McCahon. Making the commitment to become a full-time painter, he resigned his teaching position at Elam, the University of Auckland's School of Fine Arts and established his Muriwai studio. An area with which he had strong spiritual and creative links.

"From my studio at the south end of Muriwai the beach and sand bar that fronts the Tasman Sea extends 48 miles to the Kaipara harbour mouth. This is the sand dune and land area of Waioneke. Kaipara Flats are north of Helensville. This is a shockingly beautiful area. North again from Kaipara Flats a dry and north Otago-like area happens . . . I do not recommend any of this landscape as a tourist resort. It is wild and beautiful; empty and utterly beautiful. This is, after all, the coast the Maori souls pass over on their way from life to death - to Spirits Bay 'carrying their fronds and branches' . . . The light and sunsets here are appropriately magnificent. Colin McCahon in Gordon H Brown, Colin McCahon: Artist, Reed, 1993, p.109.

With the west coast area providing fresh inspiration and more time to devote to his painting, McCahon embarks upon the distinctive, Turneresque Kaipara Flat series. In these landmark works McCahon believed he captured something of value, a landscape of vanishing beauty. I am painting what we have got now and will never get again. Colin McCahon in Earth/Earth Exhibition Catalogue), Barry Lett Galleries, 1971.