Michael McCormack is a landscape painter in Wellington, New Zealand. His paintings focus largely on the light and compositional elements of the local landscape or the experience of tramping trips. They represent real places and actual moments in time and as such are auto-biographical.

McCormack is an oil painter with a BFA from the Crawford College of Art in Cork City, Ireland. He was a plein eir artist in the 1990s with a similar focus in his work relating to the perspective of roads or paths, and sun light, on the city streets. His thesis entitled ‘Light, Science and Painting’ obtained the Best Thesis Award while the invaluable Backwater Arts Bursary Award helped the artist transition forward from Art School.

In his twenties he travelled and painted in New York, Hawaii, Cornwall and Edinburgh and exhibited in each city with an artist residency at the Banana Bungalow in Maui for 18 months.

In 2003 he established McCormack Studio Gallery in Island Bay, Wellington and ran it as an open artist’s studio for over twenty years before earthquake resilience measures to strengthen the building made it no longer viable to stay. His new studio is in the central city.