“Since my college days, I’ve been experimenting a lot with different materials. To me, each idea normally chooses its own material.”

David Thuku was born in 1985 in Nakuru, Kenya, and currently lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya.

David is a painter and mixed media artist who graduated from the Buru Buru Institute of Fine Arts in Nairobi.

In 2013 he co-founded Brush-Tu Art Studio, a creative arts collective providing artists with studio space and collaborative exchange. He has exhibited extensively in Nairobi and recently participated in international Art Fairs including 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Young International Art Fair, Drawing Now Paris, and Also Known As Africa Art Fair (AKAA).

Thuku works in a variety of media, from conventional oil paint on canvas, to a more recent focus on paper. He cuts and peels paper away to reveal carefully constructed images. These works on paper explore the nature of social structure, identity, and urban migration through semi-abstract portraits. He analyzes the everyday space we occupy, peeling layers away to uncover hidden dimensions. He uses repeated motifs to indicate a spatial environment and character. The pattern has particular significance in his work, creates a sense of space, perspective, comparison, and signifies continuity.