One of the most intriguing aspects of Samant's paintings is his use of texture: manipulation of paint materials with sand and glue in the early 1960's, paper cutouts attached to the canvas in the 1970's and the application of wire drawings in the 1980's. Samant traces his interest in art back to family life in the suburbs of Bombay. He was confronted with three distinct styles of work in his childhood.

As I a young child Mohan Samant often used to visit an institution where his uncle was the director. The Jijamata Udhayan Zoo (originally known as Rani Bagh Museum) in Byculla comprised a zoo with wild animals and a small natural history museum. In one hall there were large tables with glass covers in which villages from different parts of India were constructed in miniature. These tables depicted rural and urban life as realistically as possible.

"This was the kind of life I was actually living in the village of Goregoan so it stayed in my mind with repercussions taking place in the future. In the 1970's when I happened by chance to be passing a toy shop in Greenwich Village, New York I got the idea of putting the toy animals and people on the canvas and plastering them over to give the effect of the apsaras surrounding the deities as in the centuries old dilapidated sculptures on the walls of the ancient temples".

Samant was attracted to two types of art work in the family home:

“I had a tremendous interest in the paintings which adorned our house. Several of these were prints of realistic, mythological paintings by Raja Ravi Varma, a popular artist in the 1920's. Raja Ravi Varma from Bangalore painted extremely popular, realistic portrayal of gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon. Other paintings in the house were large black and white photographs tinted with bromide colors of all the family members.

Alongside these were the surprising creations by my mother and many of her friends. A photographic portrait of a very cute Indian or European crawling baby was pasted on a paper board and then cut out. My mother would dress the baby by pasting or stitching a variety of bright colored cloth and artificial jewelry on the photograph which would become as thick as 3/4 inch.

This was framed by a carpenter in a specially made deep frame to incorporate the thickness of the work. Competitions were held regularly during the Lord Ganapathi festival.

As an 8 years old  boy it was a most intriguing concept to swallow along with landscape and village scenes in miniature - never knowing in future that I would be incorporating all these cultural activities in my works of art.”