Sam Leach (artist)

Sam Leach (born 1973) is an emerging Australian contemporary artist. He was born in Adelaide, South Australia. Leach worked for many years in the Australian Tax Office after completion of a degree in Economics. He also completed a Diploma of Art, Bachelor of Fine Art degree and a Master of Fine Art degree at RMIT in Melbourne, Victoria.^[1] Leach currently resides in Melbourne.

Leach's work has been exhibited in several museum shows including "Optimism" at the Queensland Art Gallery ^[2] and "Neo Goth" at the University of Queensland Art Museum ^[3] in 2008, in 2009 "the Shilo Project" at the Ian Potter Museum of Art ^[4] and "Horror Come Darkness" at the Macquarie University Art Gallery ^[5] and "Still" at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery in 2010.^[6] His work is held in public collections of regional galleries of Geelong, Gold Coast, Coffs Harbour, Newcastle and Gippsland and the collections of Latrobe University and the University of Queensland.

His portrait of musical comedian Tim Minchin won the Archibald Prize, one of Australia's most noteworthy art prizes, in 2010.^[7] In the same year, he won the Wynne Prize for his landscape Proposal for landscaped cosmos.^[8] In doing so he became only the third artist after William Dobell and Brett Whiteley to win the Archibald portrait prize and the Wynne landscape prize in the same year. The award has generated some controversy ^[9] due to the similarities, acknowledged by Leach, between his work ^[10] and one by seventeenth-century Dutch artist Adam Pynacker.^[11]

See also

• Archibald prize

References

External links

• artist's page
• ABC Sunday arts
• The Age newspaper
• Review of The Spoils, exhibition at Nellie Castan Gallery by Tony Lloyd (Artist)
• Opinion piece on the controversial self portrait by Tony Lloyd (Artist)
• australianedge.net interview
• Sam Leach, 2011, ARTIST PROFILE Issue 16, pp. 56-63