Capturing McKinnon
I took some interest in the unveiling of Don McKinnon’s official portrait as the Secretary of the Commonwealth. The portrait was painted by Akaroa artist, Richard McWhannell. I didn’t get a very good look at the picture but it appears a convincing likeness and overall a nice composition. It’s also good exposure for McWhannell. Hopefully he’ll get lots of lucrative commissions for this kind of work. I was interested to see other work which seems to be by McWhannell - the stuff I found is quite a bit different than this work. I had to chuckle when I saw the two pictures “Bugger me backwards blue” and “Lunch” (which features a naked man bending over exposing a very low slung nut-sack). “Bugger me backwards blue” sounds vaguely like some sort of National Party hazing ritual.
Tags: mckinnon
January 13, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I recall spotting Don McKinnon early one Sunday morning at Wellington airport; the place was fairly empty, but there he was in a very tatty T-shirt, paint-splattered track pants, and a pair of very down at heel slippers, waiting about to pick up a family member. At the time he was still a Senior Cabinet Minister, but there was no trace of that about him that day. He was “off-duty” and didn’t care too much who knew it. The very opposite of hubris.
There is nothing innately wrong with the conservative element of politics. I have always felt that they provide an essential anchoring balance to the liberal impulse to be forever changing things. I’ve lived under National govts much of my adult life, and hey the world didn’t come to an end. It has never occurred to me to vilify past National PM’s with anything like the venom we see poured on Helen Clark and Dr Cullen. (Although we are still paying for Robert Muldoon’s catastrophic mistakes, I don’t “hate” the man.)
But the sorry gap between capable men like Bolger, Birch and McKinnon and the current feckless crew in charge of National, throws into stark relief the fate of this nation should they make the Treasury benches.