About Me
BIOGRAPHY
Drawing upon a hearty blend of symbolism, surrealism, and, at times, a touch of the northern renaissance, Samuel Honey is a figurative expressionist painter whose dynamism of texture and technique leans ever toward the uncanny, ambiguous, and narratively theatrical. Based in Peckham, London, Samuel’s approach to painting is often deconstructive and Frankensteinian, collaging influences ranging from El Greco and Bruegel, through to Otto Dix, Leonora Carrington, and Lucian Freud. Samuel has taken part in two exhibitions to date, at London’s Sprout Arts gallery, and Coventry’s LTB showrooms, with his work also featuring in print in issue 14 of Curatory Magazine.
My Process
My work centers on human relationships and what it means to live and feel earnestly in a post-reality, post-truth world. Blending Symbolism, expressive figuration, and Surrealism, I merge the outward clarity of New Objectivity with the inner emotional currents of Expressionism. The result is a painting language that invites viewers to consider how their own experiences shape their reading of the ambiguous narratives before them.
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Each project begins with an image from my unconscious—a final frame of a dream, or a scene that arrives unannounced, already half-formed. Sometimes it’s the scent of fish on the high street, setting off chains of association: fish as unrewarded efforts; owls beside them as uneasy omens, echoing Bosch and Bruegel. I follow these images to uncover the meanings buried within them. I treat each painting as a form of storytelling, but one that resists surface-level interpretation, building layers of meaning through texture, composition, and colour. In this way, the work reflects on how we navigate the chaotic symbols around us and weave them into the stories that shape our sense of humanity. But what happens to that process when consensus reality dissolves?
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Rather than answer directly, my work imitates the search itself—gathering strange congregations of people, objects, and moments, and arranging them into something that feels like a story without a clear beginning—a reassembled dream. My paintings collage many decontextualised references: people I know, strangers, myself, and everyday artifacts—overflowing sinks, dirty wineglasses, happy tears, and wonky brickwork. These elements aim to evoke the uncanny beauty and quiet anxiety of postmodern life. Spatial relationships often stand in for emotional or temporal distance, further encouraging plural rather than singular readings. At times I lean into the surreal warping of forms—contorted anatomies, faces emerging from the ground—as expressions of genuine grief and pain, experiences that struggle to be contained in naturalistic representation.