Michael Hight continues his exploration of the New Zealand landscape with the ubiquitous beehive as a touchstone and a recurring motif. In recent times running parallel with the beehive works are darker paintings that incorporate landscape elements juxtaposed with objects of historical and/or personal relevance. Unifying themes in these two bodies of works are a geographical specificity and meditations on human manipulation of the natural environment.  

"The beehive paintings involve extensive travel throughout New Zealand and an element of chance. Several key ideas are at work—the idea that the paintings are a literal recovery of found scuptural installations on the landscape, notions of transformation and the electric connections between light and dark, stillness and movement, order and chaos.

My later dark paintings delve into personal history, national history along with the abstract. These paintings may be viewed as tableaux of memory; as a conveyor belt of memory that promotes mysterious and, at times surprising, links between various objects and landscapes."
Micheal Hight, 2014

Gow Langsford Gallery has represented Michael Hight since 1987.