''New Paintings'', Michael Hight (Milford Galleries Queenstown)
Michael Hight has long been known for his intricately detailed studies of beehives, situating the homely, man-made structures against the vast natural grandeur of the rural New Zealand landscape.
Individually, his ''New Paintings'' are impressive, but standing among the collection in its entirety is like being in a room where every window offers a view more awe-inspiring than the next.
The cool-toned, linear composition of Kyeburn is isolated and almost barren, the strips of dry tussock and brown earth framed against untouched snowy hills and a cloudless, chilly sky.
In comparison, Kawarau River seems to explode with life and growth, the picture plane moving cleverly from the frozen peaks to the warmer hills below, the bush and grass revealing a glimpse at the river, and the barest hints of an approaching spring.
It's the endless small details that define Hight's work: the touches of humanity in the rocks carefully placed on top of each beehive, the rusty horseshoe that hangs from a nail in Wharekuri, the characteristic and time-consuming treatment of the grass, with each individual blade carefully drawn.
Little things, like a crumbling stone or an abandoned tin, can pass unnoticed, but Hight's observation and inclusion of these minor markings of human life and toil make works like Tarras among the most fascinating of the selection.
''New Paintings'' opens at Milford Galleries Queenstown tomorrow at 5.30pm. The artist will be present.
''Selected Works'', Craig S. Primrose, Rachael Errington and Grant Hanna (Art Bay Gallery, Queenstown)
The landscape theme continues at Art Bay Gallery, where Craig S. Primrose, Rachael Errington and Grant Hanna present wide stylistic differences but equally compelling results.
Respectively, the artists could be said to represent the traditional school, a bit of storybook magic and dreamy surrealism.
Primrose's work is highly finished and majestic, reminiscent of the oil paintings of earlier centuries in his use of colour, adept handling of light and shadow, and the grand scale of the subject matter.
Grandeur Southern Alps and Mt Aspiring are dramatic and almost cinematic, with the small figures of the horse-riders and their dog in the former posed against the towering magnificence and inherent dangers of the snowy peaks.
Errington's Bluebells and The Distant Hill are gorgeous, glowing paintings, shining with highlights of silver and gold, both absorbing and emanating light.
The green and blue tones of Bluebells are extraordinarily soothing, yet the focal point is a glow of white light between the tree trunks, raising expectations that someone or something waits up ahead.
Rather than aiming for faithful realism, Errington invites the viewer to fall into an imaginative world of intense colour and mystery.
Hanna's Another Sunday Morning has the artist's characteristic tongue-in-cheek humour.
An apparently typical landscape slowly winds its way down the canvas to merge into crumpled bed sheets, at which point the authenticity of the green hills above also come into question: rolling earth or wrinkled duvet?
The scene is like the illustration of a dream, caught in the confusion of reality and fantasy, between sleep and awakening.
''Fourfold'', Anna Priluka, Ellie Gray, Jasmine Middlebrook and Annie Smits-Sandano (Gallery Thirty Three, Wanaka)
Four young female artists take the stage at Gallery Thirty Three this month, with styles that blend abstraction, realism and abundant ornamental detail.
Anna Priluka's art exemplifies the latter, her circular canvases teeming with plant, insect and bird life, depicted in layer upon layer of lush colour.
She makes use of every available inch of space, creating an effect of riotous growth and movement.
The works are beautifully rendered, taking on elements of textile art, porcelain painting, even scientific illustration.
Ellie Gray continues her explorations into architectural abstraction with Decode 311 and Decipher 311.
The highly geometrical works, depicted in primary colours with exacting precision in every line, manage to appear as both flat, two-dimensional pattern and as a three-dimensional illusion, propelling forward from the picture plane.
Gray plays a clever game with the eye, unsettling any preconceived ideas of what exactly it is looking at.
''Decode'' and ''Decipher'' are titles and instruction.
Jasmine Middlebrook is an established force in the portraiture field, but her recent body of work uniquely combines photorealism with ethereal abstraction with tinges of surrealism.
Her subjects are astonishingly lifelike, real people who seem to feel and breathe, from their freckled noses to their pensive poses and don't-want-to-pose-for-this expressions.
Annie Smits-Sandano takes a wider step into abstraction.
The smooth, joyful swirling of lines and loops invests her works with an energy and liveliness that is balanced out by the serenity of the complementary colour palette and the crisp, purposeful execution.
-by Laura Elliott
