Samantha comes from Northland and is a secondary school teacher. The daughter of an established potter in Northland she taught herself to draw.

Here is a short bio in her owns words:

" I first got into art when I was about 7 years old. I had an obsession with horses, thanks to some cartoons of the time, and I drew them often. During secondary school I pretty much settled on art as my favourite subject, and almost considered going to art school. But the cost was high and at the time it seemed a bit of a gamble. Many years later, I am a high school teacher and, ironically, an art degree would be quite useful right now! I now do art part-time, on weekends and holidays. My full-time job is as an English teacher at secondary school (NZ).

I was watching, of all things, a New Zealand television advertisement for a car rally. The ad used animated car/engine parts to form a beating heart and I thought, hmmm, that's interesting, what else could you make a heart out of? I can't say why I chose insects, maybe it had something to do with the frogs we were keeping at the time, who liked to eat live insects. Whatever it was, from there grew a number of drawings using the heart template - or other shapes. I immediately found the templates were convenient for framing the images I was drawing, because I didn't have to worry about what to put in the background. "

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