An Artist You Should Know: Seb Samson
Portraits by Elena Saviano.
To tell Seb Samson’s story, I’m going to start at the end.
This month marks one year since Seb made a difficult decision that radically reshaped both his life and career. He had started as an intern at Vice during college and eventually graduated to a high-ranking creative role at Condé Nast. A few years in, he hit a breaking point: something akin to a mental breakdown, followed by a prolonged and stifling period of emotional and creative paralysis. Demands at work were relentless, unsustainable, and depleting. His personal life was suffocating under the weight of professional expectations. He had been chasing a promotion he had expected to materialize, but it never did. He was scarcely creating anything for himself that felt remotely fulfilling. So, for 11 days, he checked into a psychiatric hospital to begin recuperation and reevaluation.
He identified himself as “the person they should worry about the least” and later told me that, upon further reflection, identifying work stress for the fallout felt “ridiculous.” While that may appear true on paper, I find this self-assessment to be unnecessarily severe and almost cruel to the creative mind stuck circulating the corporate hamster wheel. “People in these kinds of environments tell you you’re worth a certain amount of money. You have this big title, and they start treating you differently. You start to think, hell yeah. That is me. But it’s just the fucking rat race,” Seb said. “I couldn’t let myself be another cog in their wheel. I wanted something better.”
Seb was raised between New York and Florida: on bootlegs, on screenprinting in the garage, on self-produced rap albums, on Super 8 rough cuts. From an early age, he understood that creativity isn’t about having the newest tools but about honing the hand that holds them. He went to business school at Pace, a decision driven less by striking personal ambition and more by gratitude to supportive parents. “The idea of making money or making a career out of art was completely out of the question,” he told me. But when he landed back in New York for college, he threw himself into experimentation, his spare time spent trying anything and making everything. His entry into art was grounded in curiosity and innovation, principles that evidently continue to drive his very multidimensional present-day practice.
What remains most remarkable to me about Seb is not just his immense capacity for artistic excellence, but a deeply kind and open spirit: one that refuses to be shaken by the many pitfalls and disillusionments haunting artists working in today’s creative landscape. His love for scrappy, low-budget, passion-fueled work is radiant and infuses everything he makes with an unmistakable sincerity. “The stuff that is actually the most cutting edge, the most culturally relevant, doesn’t make money immediately,” Seb said. “And if it does make money immediately, it’s completely spontaneous and unpredictable. Art and commerce inherently don’t go together. The idea of return should always be the most secondary thing.”
This is the central thesis grounding Free Beer Tomorrow – an art gallery meets pop-up meets hangout space meets living archive of subcultural spirit – that Seb and a group of close friends have brought to life. It’s a venture where nobody gets paid, but everybody shows up. To be just a little cheesy, the currency is connection. It’s a space that thrives not in spite of its informality, but because of it, built entirely on a gleaming love for community, spontaneity, and expression for its own sake.
We need more artists like Seb in the world. And ultimately, we need more people like him. Seb understands that creativity, at its highest frequency, is free of ego and untethered from agenda. And beyond all that, he’s just deeply real: generous with his time, honest in his words, willing to share openly, but, more importantly, willing to truly listen. This, I believe, is what makes way for such honest and striking art to emerge. Seb’s portfolio can be found here. Explore, and enjoy.