Michael Hight

Michael Hight is a self-taught artist whose preferred medium is oil on canvas. His work considers the notion of the beehive as a metaphor for transformation. “The beehive metaphor appeals to the artist as a site of transformation, a setting where wax becomes honeycomb, where the luminous, geometric structure witnesses the conversion of nectar into honey. And each beehive transforms the artist’s palette, the ochre, white, and red, into sensual image. The paintings stand as portraits of the New Zealand landscape yet they also stand as portraits of the art making process. The artist, like the bee, navigates, collects, and transforms.” (Paula Green, Omarama, Place of Light: Michael Hight’s Beehive Paintings.)

Set within an archetypal New Zealand rural landscape, stacks of hives become the main protagonist within each scene. Seasonal, geographical and compositional variations are explored which allow the artist to negotiate subtle nuances in light, tone, composition and intensity of hue. Hight’s paintings are technically sophisticated and meticulous in their attention to detail. Stylistically, Hight's works appear anchored within realism and incite comparisons with American realist painter Andrew Wyeth, whose desolate landscapes remain mysteriously uninhabited. However on close inspection, the application of paint and arrangement of elements within the composition clearly reveal Hight’s proficiency as an abstractionist.

Combined with a noticeable absence of activity, the works reveal a crucial paradox which Gregory O’Brien cites is central to Hight’s work, where “…the immense activity within the hives is so comprehensively contradicted by the inactivity of their external appearance.” (O’Brien, Gregory, Michael Hight: Land of Milk and Honey, John Leech Gallery (Catalogue), Auckland, 2004.) One cannot help but regard the works as symbolic of the human condition.

Michael Hight lives and works in Auckland and has exhibited widely throughout New Zealand. His work is held in public and private collections within New Zealand including Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, The Chartwell Collection, The James Wallace Trust and Coopers Lybrand.