Mike Harold is a painter based in Dannevirke, in the Tararua District. He paints primarily in oils.

Mike has a background in farming and teaching. He has developed as an artist over the last twenty-five years with encouragement, tuition and support from many members of a strong Dannevirke Art Society. Over this time he has also benefitted from several opportunities to build an appreciation for a wide range of artworks important to the European painting tradition.

Mike is best known for his images which interpret, capture and respond to features in the local Southern Hawke’s Bay landscape. He has also experienced positive response to his work in the narrative-figurative genre, in which he seeks to capture aspects of the “social landscape.”

Mike believes that his painting style and subjects have been especially influenced by his personal interest in the paintings of the “Father of Modern Art”, Paul Cezanne, the modernist landscapes of New Zealand’s Toss Woollaston, and in the narrative-type images of Australians Sydney Nolan and Garry Shead.