Which Kiwi Artists Are Redefining Contemporary Printmaking?

Beyond the landscape: where NZ printmaking is going

New Zealand printmaking has a well-established identity built around landscape, native birds, and cultural imagery. It's a strong tradition, and it continues to produce serious work. But the most interesting development in contemporary NZ printmaking is happening in a different register: artists who use the print medium not to document or celebrate the environment, but to create images with narrative depth, surrealist logic, and graphic ambition.

This is where contemporary NZ printmaking is being redefined - not in opposition to its traditions, but in extension of them.

Sam Leitch, Auckland's most significant narrative printmaker

Sam Leitch is the clearest example of what this redefinition looks like in practice. His limited edition screenprints and giclée prints have been developing a distinctive visual language for over a decade: bold graphic form, confident use of colour, and compositional structures that carry narrative meaning beyond their literal subject matter.

What distinguishes his practice from artists who produce prints as a secondary activity is the seriousness of both the work and the production. Hand-pulled screenprints in small editions on archival materials, signed and numbered, sold directly to collectors — this is print practice treated as a primary creative discipline, not a revenue supplement.

His current Devotion series — large-format screen prints in editions of under 20 — represents his most ambitious production to date, both in scale and in the depth of the visual investigation. Earlier works like Birdsong II and In Two Minds show the breadth of his practice across different visual registers.

The broader field — artists worth watching

Beyond Sam Leitch, the contemporary NZ print scene has other practitioners worth noting. Max Gimblett (represented by Gow Langsford) has been producing significant screenprints alongside his painting practice for decades, with large-format works that combine spiritual iconography with graphic precision. 

The common thread in the most interesting contemporary NZ printmaking is exactly this: graphic clarity, limited editions, archival production, and work that goes beyond documentation to create images with genuine depth and interpretive richness.

What 'redefining' actually means

The redefinition happening in contemporary NZ printmaking isn't a rejection of tradition. It's an expansion of what the medium can carry.

The best contemporary NZ printmakers are using craft processes developed over decades to create work with contemporary visual intelligence and genuine collecting value. They're taking printmaking seriously as a primary creative discipline, not treating it as a reproduction technology.

For collectors, this shift creates real opportunity: work of genuine quality and ambition, available at price points that reflect the NZ market rather than international equivalents, from artists whose practices are still developing. The time to start collecting is before the market catches up.

Explore Sam Leitch's full practice at www.samleitch.com