EXPLORING THE SURREAL
Mangawhai-based artist Sam Leitch brings a surreal and deeply considered practice to the Northland coast, where the landscape has become both anchor and muse.
Sam Leitch's path as an artist began early. Supportive teachers at high school recognised his talent and created a sculpture class specifically for him – a small act that set the course for a creative life. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Visual Arts, majoring in painting, from Auckland University of Technology in 2009, and began exhibiting with galleries across New Zealand not long after graduating.
Sam's practice sits at the intersection of painting, printmaking, and visual storytelling. He reimagines familiar objects, symbols, and environments through a surreal lens, drawing viewers into narratives that feel recognisable yet subtly disorienting. Bold colour, considered composition, and deliberate shifts in scale give space for a conversation to unfold between artist, artwork, and viewer – transforming everyday imagery into something that invites curiosity and reflection.
His work spans acrylic and oil painting, hand-separated screen prints on museum-grade cotton paper, and limited edition giclée prints with archival inks. That range of mediums reflects the breadth of his thinking: meticulous in craft, yet open to where each process leads.
His career has taken him across borders, with exhibitions in Auckland, Sydney, Hawke's Bay, and Melbourne, and appearances at multiple art fairs. But it is his recent move from Auckland to Mangawhai that feels like a natural arriving.
Having grown up playing outdoors on an orchard, Sam has always been shaped by a connection to land and open space. The Northland coast grounds those themes – presence, nature, and the ocean – that run through both his life and his work, anchoring it in both cultural and geographic identity while reaching toward something more universal: growth, resilience, and reflection.
Sam Leitch’s work invites viewers to pause, explore, and consider the familiar in unfamiliar ways – a visual dialogue between artist, artwork, and audience.