Artwork Information

Portraiture is not an area of activity the Colin McCahon is widely known for. This monumental head has an intriguing title, inscribed on the reverse, referring to the fact that it was probably not drawn from life but from memory.

The artist's portraits of these years are always reductive in terms of how a person's features are conveyed, yet always graphically expressive of a specific person's appearance. (Colin McCahon's Titirangi, 2002)