Leighton Upson NZ

Leighton Upson is an artist based in Taranaki. Through painting, he approaches and explores one place within a native forest fragment in urban Ngāmotu/New Plymouth in multiple ways by applying layering principles. It is an experiential approach. He investigates ways of exploring, connecting with, and communicating the remaining 5% of lowland forest. 

Upson’s work is an on-going exploration into the nature and problems of painting the forest, both its potential and limitations, and the question of how forest paintings can challenge the viewer.  Focus is given to providing an ecological thinking or ecological attunement in the artwork, connecting through the painterly performative in the forest. A ‘becoming local plant’. Upson’s paintings explore the relationship between vitality, expression, feeling with the forest, symbols and pictorial treatment of the forest. His paintings demand slow and careful perusal. 

Upson has a Master of Arts in Art History from Auckland University and a Master of Fine Arts and Design from Auckland University of Technology. He is currently a Fine Arts PhD candidate, at COCA, Massey University in Wellington. 

Two of Upson’s paintings were selected into the 2019 and 2020 Wallace Art Awards and one of these paintings is in the collection of the Wallace Arts Trust. In 2022 Upson was in the National Contemporary Art Awards at the Waikato Museum.