John Honeywill (b. 1952, Brisbane) is a still life painter living and working in Brisbane. An accomplished art educator for much of his professional life, Honeywill now focusses solely on his painting practice. His meticulous and inquisitive works continue the tradition of still life painting with the artist describing – “I paint the quiet visual conversations between everyday objects; paintings that explore presence and stillness in the genre of the still life – a genre that links the intimate world with the public.”
Honeywill studied under William Robinson and Betty Churcher at Kelvin Grove College of Advanced Education and later at QUT. He began exhibiting in the mid-1970’s when teaching in Bundaberg, where he attended Flying Art School workshops presented by visiting artists, including Roy Churcher and Mervyn Moriarty. Taking what he’d learnt during that period of mentorship and after experimenting with different media and genres into the 1990s, the constant attraction of still life led Honeywill to focus his practice. Ever since, Honeywill has been pursuing the appeal of nuances in colour, light, tone, space, compositional interplay, and intuitively capturing the inherent beauty of the objects he paints.
Honeywill has held regular solo exhibitions in Australia since the mid-1970s. He has completed a number of recent residencies, most notably at Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre at Murwillumbah in 2017, and as the inaugural ‘Open Studio’ artist at QAGOMA in Brisbane in 2019.
Honeywill has his work held in public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Australian National Library, Canberra; QAGOMA, Brisbane; Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane; Artspace, Mackay; Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville; and Tweed Regional Gallery, Murwillumbah, New South Wales.
Image: John Honeywill, Poppy dish, 2025, oil on linen, 36 x 36 cm
