Sam Mitchell (b. 1971, Colorado Springs, USA) is a New Zealand–based contemporary artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, watercolour, collage, ceramics and her signature reverse paintings on Perspex. She lives and works in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand).

Mitchell’s work is grounded in psychological portraiture and narrative, using figuration as a vehicle to explore identity, culture, gender and power. Her imagery draws on domestic life, pop culture, literary and historical sources, and the everyday—transforming the familiar into provocative, layered works that combine humour, satire and symbolic resonance. Food, interiors, pets, mythic figures and historical characters populate her compositions, while her Perspex technique—painting backwards on clear plastic—underscores her interest in portraits from the inside out. 

Sam Mitchell completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 2000 and has exhibited extensively across Aotearoa and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Tomorrow We Will Run Faster at Boyd-Dunlop Gallery, Napier (2025), a survey of new and selected works centred on food, domestic life and portraiture, and Wonder Wall at Melanie Roger Gallery, Auckland (2025), showcasing her watercolour practice alongside key themes from her wider oeuvre. 

In 2023–24 Mitchell was featured in Strange Friends at The Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt, an ambitious group exhibition curated to explore contemporary approaches to the painted figure. The show brought together ten artists investigating portraiture and character through diverse media, situating Mitchell’s work within a broader dialogue about representation, familiarity and imagination in figurative practice. Her contributions included a series of acrylic on Perspex works spanning 2021–23 that exemplified her dynamic engagement with figuration, symbolism and art-historical re-framing. 

Among her honours, Mitchell won the Paramount Award at the Wallace Art Awards (2010), which supported a residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York. She has also been a William Hodges Fellow(2014) and the Tylee Cottage Artist in Residence (2015). 

Her works are held in private and public collections in New Zealand and internationally, including collections in the United States, United Kingdom, Egypt and France, as well as in institutional collections such as the University of Auckland Art Collection.