Samantha Mitchell is an Auckland-based artist known for her Pop-like colourful 'portraits'. On these bold visages—painted with acrylic on the underside of Perspex—much smaller portraits of other people, or tattoos, images of assorted symbolic animals, plants or objects, are decoratively superimposed as a sort of 'face-painting'.
The artist also works in ceramics, usually focusing on feminist settler history and painting on fired platters.
Mitchell has been the recipient of several awards and residencies. She was the Artist in Residence at Tylee Cottage, Whanganui in 2015 and a William Hodges Fellow in Invercargill in 2014. She was also awarded the Paramount Award at the Wallace Art Awards in New York in 2010.