128. David Surman - Pedro

2026
Oil on linen on board
7 x 5 x 1/16 inch
Signed on Verso

David Surman is a British artist whose paintings use figurative forms executed with an immediacy and apparent simplicity that reflects his belief that art should feel as natural and instinctive as breathing. Across his practice, Surman seeks to create structures for thought and feeling that are simultaneously universal and deeply personal. Though originally trained as a filmmaker, he now works primarily in painting, developing a visual language that combines humour, tenderness, irony, and psychological tension.

In recent years, Surman’s work has increasingly explored the projection of human experience onto the natural world. Employing elements of pathetic fallacy, cartoon imagery, and anthropomorphic forms, he imbues animals and figures with emotional complexity while questioning established hierarchies of taste and value within both art and society’s understanding of nature. His paintings move between sincerity and absurdity, liveliness and melancholy, reflecting on the shared condition of precarity experienced by all life on an environmentally unstable planet.

Surman completed an MA in Film and Television Studies at University of Warwick, UK (2003–2004), following a BA in Animation at Newport Film School, UK (1999–2002).

Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Soft Eye Hard Nose at THEO Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia (2026); Roommates with Ian Gouldstone at Sibyl Gallery, New Orleans, USA (2025); After the Flood at Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London (2025); Sleepless Moon at THEO Gallery, Seoul, Korea (2024); PAWS: David Surman x Wandler at Stigter van Doesburg, Amsterdam (2023); and Portraits of a Wild Family at Sens Gallery, Hong Kong (2022).

Selected group exhibitions and fairs include Pedigree at OHSH Projects, London (2025); Unity in Diversity at Powerlong Museum, Shanghai (2025); Dog Days of Summer at Timothy Taylor Gallery, New York (2024); Paper Cuts at the Saatchi Gallery, London (2018); and fairs including VOLTA New York, ARCO Madrid, Art Busan, Art Jakarta, and Art Central Hong Kong.

Awards include the UWN Strategic Insight Programme Scholarship (2009) and an Arts and Humanities Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship (2003).