Reflecting McCahon's increasingly dispirited state during the closing years of his vast and prodigious career, a final series of four works, drawing upon texts from Ecclesiastes, poignantly illustrate the artist's ultimate collapse of faith in faith itself. In stark contrast to the majority of his oeuvre which had hitherto optimistically asserted a 'Victory over Death', now - consumed by heavy drinking and bitterness at years of public misunderstanding and denigration, as well as an increasing paranoia and suspicion of even long-time supporters, and most fundamentally, his debilitating battle against dementia - McCahon emphasized the futility of human effort and indeed, profound uncertainty as to G...