My partner, Michael Hight, and I live most of our lives in self isolation in our rural setting –  writing and painting, and doing home things. We are so lucky at the moment. His studio is on our property and we own a tract of protected regenerating bush with a track. We are a short drive from Te Henga Bethells Beach but have chosen to observe the rules and stay at home. Early morning runs and swims, when the sun is barely up, are off daily routines until our bubbles open.

Michael currently has show on at Milford Gallery in Dunedin (until April 14th) – an extraordinary group of paintings where he matches a beehive work and a black painting to a New Zealand river. These come out of his (and our) road trips. We weren’t going to be able to make the Dunedin opening but it ended up nobody did! Now I am doing individualised ‘road trips’ as I look at Michael’s paintings (and as we write, read, invent, create, muse and ‘road trip’) from bubble solitude.

I rarely walk up to Michael’s studio and watch his work in progress. So when a show goes up, it is mostly a surprise. Each time I see a new show, I am transported, uplifted, utterly diverted by the experience of looking. I find the works transcendental, and of the greatest comfort in their mix of light and dark, strangeness, familiarity and complicated humanity. Yes I am biased, but I just love them.

You can watch a short video of Michael in his studio

Michael’s Dunedin Milford Gallery show