![Untitled. [Moby Dick is (was) a volcano]. - Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa](http://www.digitalnz.org/thumbnails/from_large/664/?resize=520x840&src=http%3A%2F%2Fcollections.tepapa.govt.nz%2Fdb_images%2Fdigitalnzthumb.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26height%3D640%26irn%3D16659 "Untitled. [Moby Dick is (was) a volcano]. - Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa")
McCahon's Muriwai
By: Courtney Johnston
McCahon established his painting studio at Muriwai Beach in May 1969. The move both enabled him to work at at much larger scale, and fueled the remainder of his painting years. He wrote: 'From my studio at the south end of Muriwai Beach, the beach and sand bar that fronts the Tasman Sea extends 48 miles to the Kaipara Harbour mouth. This is the sand dune and lake area of Waioneke. Kaipara Flats are north of Helensville. This is a shockingly beautiful area....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.'
From the two intimate maps he drew of the beach for John Caselberg to the memorialisation of his estranged friend, the poet James K. Baxter in "Walk (Series C)' to the melding of Oaia island to the great white whale of Melville's Moby Dick, McCahon turned to the landscape over and over for inspiration and interpretation.
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