📍McCahon House, 67 Otitori Bay Road, Titirangi, Auckland 0604, New Zealand
1953 – 1960“I grew up in Dunedin, and as a boy I watched a sign-writer painting letters on a shop window and was entranced by the shapes of words; that sight, and the light over the Otago hills, stayed with me and later filled my paintings with words and landscapes. I studied art in Dunedin, worked as a labourer and fruit picker around the South Island to support my family, and in 1953 my wife, Anne, our four children and I moved north to Auckland, where I took a job at the Auckland City Art Gallery. That year we bought a small, simple cottage at 67 Otitori Bay Road in French Bay, Titirangi, on the steep, bush-clad slopes above the Manukau Harbour. It was surrounded by kauri forest, and I altered it myself, adding a deck, rooms and a studio space in the garage. It was cramped, damp and often cold, and money was tight, but the setting was extraordinary: the kauri trunks rising out of the bush, the light through the leaves, the harbour below and the rain moving across the hills. I painted on the deck, in the garage and in every corner of the house, and the kauri entered my work directly in the Titirangi and Kauri series, while larger works such as the Northland Panels and The Wake were also made here. These were years of great experiment, in which I found new ways to paint the New Zealand landscape and its spiritual meaning. We left Titirangi in 1960 for Grey Lynn. The house has been restored by the McCahon House Trust as a museum, with an artists' residency beside it, so that new artists can live and work among the same kauri.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today