Colin John McCahon (; 1August 191927May 1987) was a prominent New Zealand artist whose work over 45 years consisted of various styles, including landscape, figuration, abstraction, and the overlay of painted text. Along with Toss Woollaston and Rita Angus, McCahon is credited with introducing modernism to New Zealand in the mid-20th century. He is regarded as New Zealand's most important modern artist, particularly in his landscape work. Early life and education McCahon was born in Timaru on 1 August 1919 the second of three children of Ethel Beatrice Ferrier and her husband John Kernohan McCahon. He spent most of his childhood in Dunedin, although his family lived in Oamaru for one year. He showed an early interest in art, influenced by regular visits to exhibitions and the work of his maternal grandfather, photographer and painter William Ferrier, which hung in the family home. He attended the Maori Hill Primary School and Otago Boys' High School, which he called: "the most unforgettable horror of my youth". At the age of 14, convinced he wanted to be an artist, McCahon took Russell Clark's Saturday-morning art classes to learn the fundamental skills of painting. Visits to an exhibition by Toss Woollaston, whose landscapes, "clean, bright with New Zealand light, and full of air", also inspired him to become a painter. McCahon later attended the Dunedin School of Art (now known as Otago Polytechnic) from 1937 to 1939, where his teacher Robert Nettleton Field proved to be an inspirational influence. After leaving Otago, McCahon attended King Edward Technical College Art School as a part-time student. He first exhibited his work at the Otago Art Society in 1939. His painting Harbour Cone from Peggy’s Hill was considered too abstract and was excluded from the Otago Art Society's exhibition, despite a rule entitling each member to submit one work. The society’s conventions of good taste were challenged by McCahon’s modernist style, which reduced the volcanic cones of the Otago Peninsula to a topographic series of bare, almost monochromatic forms. The protests of other young artists, who withdrew their works in sympathy, forced the society to relent and display the work. McCahon supported himself in the late 1930s with a stint of working in a touring variety show, stage scenery painting, and fruit picking. Some of these jobs were undertaken during his voluntary service for the state during World War II. War years At the beginning of