The Art

Michael Hight Crossing the Line: Waihou River, Oil on Linen 1500mm x 2750mm

b. 1961, New Zealand Lives in Auckland

Michael Hight is a self-taught painter who has been exhibiting regularly since the late 1980s. He has a Bachelor of Social Science and undertook extensive travel through North America, Europe and North Africa in the eighties. He is most commonly associated with his realistic depictions of beehives in the New Zealand landscape, particularly in Central Otago and Canterbury. More recent works have temporarily left behind his identifiable landscapes in favour of surreal dreamscapes within which a personal sense of real childhood innocence is evident. His use of juxtaposition, ambiguous symbols and an overwhelming sense of the dark and mysterious, together create an uncertainty in these works that is as curiously haunting as it is beautiful. Crossing the Line: Waihou was shown in Hight’s 2014 solo exhibition of the same name. Hight has an exhibition history of more than 25 years. He continues to exhibit regularly in New Zealand and Australia. Highlights include inclusion in exhibitions at City Gallery, Wellington (2001 and 2007)—and his work is held in numerous public and private collections in New Zealand, and private collections in the UK, Germany, Italy, USA, Hong Kong and Australia. In 2014 Gow Langsford Gallery published his first monograph Michael Hight: Crossing the Line. Gow Langsford Gallery has represented Michael Hight since 1987.