Michael McCormack is a landscape painter in Wellington, New Zealand. His paintings are auto-biographical in so far as each painting is of a real place known to the artist. His paintings focus on the light and pathways of the scene while the significance of the actual location is of secondary importance, though still entirely relevant. In effect, he is painting the feeling of being there. In this way a path leading through the native bush from a hiking trip or a rock channel by the coast in Island Bay are treated as similar subjects – a pathway – or an invitation into the painting.

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 (to 2024) he established McCormack Studio Gallery in Island Bay, Wellington and ran it as an open artist’s studio for twenty plus years. Building earthquake resilience obligations in Wellington ended this tenure but not prematurely. It was time to move into a private studio space.