David Caines was born in 1963 in Wakefield, Yorkshire. Early creative successes included a drawing of an owl being featured on BBC’s Vision On, and a cartoon about Joe Strummer being published in Sounds music paper in 1978. His art education was at Chelsea School of Art from 1982-1986. For the next eight years David painted in London and in 1994 held a well-received one-man show at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill. Since then he has exhibited his work at numerous group shows and regularly sold his work to private collectors and associates. Since 1990 David has also pursued a successful career in graphic design and communications. David lives and works in North London.
His precise paintings are imbued with melancholy and the nostalgia of objects, both mundane and odd. Recent subjects have included distant landscapes of the moon’s surface, ‘portraits’ of photos found in the street, and tributes to circus amputees and performers. David is equally interested in the abstract and the figurative and characters in his paintings often appear to have wandered into a painterly plane of simple marks and flat colour.
“Bright pop items stand in isolation against stark abstract backgrounds conjuring both a sense of nostalgic sadness and a celebration of the perfection of classic design.” The Guardian
Some dusty things
The memories, magic and meaning afforded to objects are key to David’s work. Please explore ‘some dusty things’ on this site, an ever-expanding archive of the faded and forgotten, a catalogue of a junk shop life.
Many of the works on this website are for sale and David often undertakes commissions. Please get in touch.
All images © the artist. Images may not be used without permission.