[1] Michael Illingworth was born in Yorkshire and emigrated with his family to Tauranga in the early 1950s when he was 20[2] working as a photographer and photoengraver in Auckland.

[4] While working for Musgrove Illingworth was influenced by a number of the gallery's artists including Enrico Baj and John Christoforou.

The critic for The New Zealand Herald summed up what would be the response to Illingworth's art for most of his painting life, ‘Here is an exhibition so removed from our recent diet of landscapes that it will make traditionalists shudder and iconoclasts whoop with joy.’[3] In 1963 he married Dene White who had studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts and, although income from his work was to prove illusive, Illingworth built a reputation as a painter with exceptionally high standards.

As fellow painter and friend Don Binney observed, he had a ‘professional contempt for compromise’ and brought ‘scrupulous dedication to his work’[8] This was recognised in 1966 when he became the first recipient of the University of Otago's Frances Hodgkins Fellowship and he and his wife Dene[9] travelled to Dunedin.

The fellowship did not end happily as the university struggled to find suitable studio space and the year-long residency was cut short.

[10] The Illingworths returned to Auckland, at first living in Puhoi, and then in 1973 moving to Coroglen near Whitianga on the Coromandel Peninsula where he painted and farmed until his death in 1988.

Curator Robert Leonard described Illingworth’s paintings as ‘sub-divided, framed up into discrete sections: dividing nature, suburb, city, work, love.

In his 1965 exhibition at the Barry Lett Galleries Illingworth included Adam and Eve[23] a painting of the Biblical couple naked with exposed genitals.

A number of complaints brought the police to the exhibition and the gallery director Barry Lett was asked to remove the work.

[28] Another event in Illingworth's career that has attracted attention was the purchase of 17 paintings by a single collector from his 1967 Barry Lett Galleries exhibition.

The move to Dunedin in 1966 to take up the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship, reunited Illingworth with Baxter who was the Robert Burns Fellow at the time.