Michelle Bellamy (Born 1987, age 37 years) is a contemporary New Zealand landscape painter of Scottish, Italian & English decent. From her studio in Nelson, New Zealand, Michelle paints bold, finely detailed landscapes and using acrylic paint on board. She is inspired by the land, back-country and outdoor culture of Aotearoa /New Zealand as well as the old rustic markings of mankind she sees scattered remotely around the country.
Bellamy’s work depicts scenes ranging the country from Auckland to Otago, with her most recent studies being from the Nelson Lakes National Park, Kahurangi National Park and the Otago/Tekapo region. Her current style is described as 'contemporary realism' and a good proportion of her subject matter features still life subjects; old and run down buildings consisting of either homesteads, baches and fisherman huts. She is also drawn to back-country tramping huts and vast mountain scenes, as Michelle spends much of her time outside, hunting, mountain biking & exploring the valleys and ranges of New Zealand.
For two decades, Bellamy has been established as a highly regarded and sought after New Zealand artist. Her dedication and commitment to compete at a high level is also reflected in the perfection she seeks as an artist after two decades of full-time painting. Her works are held in private collections world wide and she has completed two large commissions for Sir Robert Jones collection in Auckland and Wellington. She has the distinction of winning People’s Choice awards in various exhibitions around New Zealand and her paintings have been widely published in books & calendars around the country. Michelle has also completed a collection of artworks for the Blackenbrook Winery and has just finished working with Fish & Game NZ on a new project.
Michelle is a self-taught artist who has dedicated many years to perfecting her fine art. She was born in Nelson, New Zealand and spent her childhood exploring the outdoors within the South Island of New Zealand, and then moved to the North Island when she left school. She explored the country for 6 years from Omaha down to Wellington while she lived in the North Island.
Art runs in the blood in Michelle’s family, with grandparents on both sides of the family who were artists, followed by both Michelle’s parents who are involved in the arts. Michelle’s father started his career painting then created a sign-writing business, and has now moved back to painting, while Michelle’s mother was a highly skilled medical illustrator. Both her parents have influenced her work, Michelle’s paintings have a strong design element underlying the traditional landscape and she incorporates fine illustrative detail into her works.
The purity and brightness of her palette captures and intensifies the clarity of New Zealand’s light, holding her subject matter up in stunning colour and detail. Michelle is often drawn to the water’s edge, her paintings featuring the coast, lakes and mountain tarns. Through precision brushwork and careful layering, acrylic paint serves to render extraordinary the iconic and much loved huts, baches and boathouses of our recent past. In her recent work these are sometimes juxtaposed with timeless landscapes from the New Zealand wild, an added dimension which both records our history and channels a certain nostalgia for golden days gone by. The beauty of the New Zealand outdoors draws her back, and she has a deep personal bias for natural New Zealand vistas.