Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to King David. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
King, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
It’s a long journey that starts with me as a young kid finding real joy in creative pursuits, but in an underfunded public school context where any sort of seriousness related to that creativity is largely ignored, usually because of the lack of resources available for educators to nurture any of their students’ talents that lie tangential to the academic. Despite this, I had exceptional teachers at every step of the way that recognized my academic propensity early on and nourished my growth into realms of excellence within which I could open up the space to investigate my artistic potential. Having completed a rigorous program called Prep for Prep, designed to find and place gifted students from immigrant backgrounds into independent schools their families could otherwise not afford without significant scholarship, I arrived at a school called Dalton, known for producing the best and brightest in a myriad of fields including the arts. There, I was finally exposed to a learning environment where I could earnestly investigate the early joy I found in my creative pursuits and grow it into a full-blown love and passion for Art. From there, I was able to continue my scholarship at Gettysburg College, where I majored in Studio Arts and further evolved my passion into a serious artistic philosophy (as Naruto would say, I found my “ninja way”). Amer Kobaslija, my college painting professor, grew from my teacher to my mentor to a father-figure, provoking my conceptions of Art by constantly challenging my own philosophy for the sake of galvanization, so that, upon graduation, I could take my fully-fleshed out conception of myself as a professional Artist into the world, instilling my work and my journey with the confidence necessary to never give up on the pursuit of beauty. After all, Artists are people who have to make Art, no matter what! Once I realized this about myself, the answer to what I had to do was simple. Really, I don’t have a choice in the matter at all. That’s what it means to be an Artist in the most professional sense.
King, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
As mentioned in my previous response, my academic journey since childhood was always unfolding alongside the growth of my artistic understanding, until those things became synchronous as I set out on my career path as a Fine Artist. Along that journey, I noticed my own taste would always tend towards the abstract and conceptual. History has plenty of great art in it, but in my taste, the Rothko Chapel is something much more effective than the Sistine. This is my way of saying that I always thought of abstract art, or at the very least, art that wasn’t obvious in it’s figurative depictions, as more interesting to look at. Investigating why I think this way inevitably becomes a process in self-interrogation that I am still on, though from these initial investigations I realized that somehow, I am more inclined to sit with abstract work for longer periods of time. Why? Because abstract work speaks to something specific about the human spirit through non-specific means. This is an inherently spiritual way for artwork to exist, but the work itself is never divorced from its process. Over time, I’ve honed in on the process-based principles that pervade my work and give it the charge necessary to alchemically elevate to something greater than the sum of its parts. This is the kind of work I make and the standard to which I hold my creations. My paintings feature layers of thick and/or thin hues and saturations, applied through various physical means across surfaces ranging from wood to copper, and almost never with the use of an actual brush. I make work that embraces the nature of an art piece as a charged object that imparts its charge through the buildup/breakdown of my actions across these surfaces, such that a harmony is formed that is not only interesting to look at, but that also touches on the sensory experience beyond mere sight, invoking smell, taste, touch and sound. From these pragmatic points of sensory departure, and with an openness of looking, the work is then able to bring up abstract responses like sensations related to dreams, memories, fears, aspirations, and anything else we carry in our individual or collective subconsciousness.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
The most salient point of contact that sheds light on the solidification of my artistic identity starts on April 10, 2016. I woke up next to a girl in my bed that morning at college, groggily answering my phone and then replying startled when I realized that the Dean was calling me. Anyone who went to school knows this usually means you are in some kind of trouble. I assumed it was ganja-related since I had already been caught with that on campus the year before, having established a complex but respectful relationship with the Dean since that time. Interestingly enough, she hails from Jamaican heritage as well, so we were always able to converse beyond the constraints of the sterile academic environment. She called me in to the main building on campus and assured me I wasn’t facing an disciplinary action, but she would not tell me what the reason was for the call. She even told me not to go to the class I had that morning. So when I go in, the first person I see is my mom, who had up until that point never been on campus. Every time I had to travel to and from Gettysburg and NYC, my dad was the one who drove me. I walk into a conference room and my sister is there, along with my Aunt and Grandma from my dad’s side, as well as my dad’s best childhood friend, and my other Grandma as well. I had not seen this Aunt (my dad’s only sister) in years up to that point, so I was initially excited to see everyone in the room and then skeptical when I realized they weren’t there in a celebratory mood. It took a moment of silence before my sister spoke up and said “so is anybody gonna tell him or what?” The Dean responds “it’s about your dad”. I asked if he was sick or something. What happened next is a bit hazy since I can’t remember exactly who spilled the beans first, or who started crying, but this was the morning I would come to learn that we’d lost my dad to Suicide a few days prior. The Dean had advised that my close family come down to tell me in person. As soon as I heard the news, I got up and walked out of that conference room in disbelief. The Dean, Jennifer, followed a few feet behind me. She followed as I walked downstairs, out the building, across the quad and out to the soccer field. I finally stopped once I got there, staring out at the empty field and open sky, entirely numb. By now, she’d gotten a bit closer to me, and once I stopped still, she tenderly rubbed her hand across my back. She let me know that I would be all right, that this was not going to be an easy journey but that I’m lucky to have people to help me get through it. All I could say to her was that I couldn’t stop thinking about my dad, and that I wished I could tell him I love him. It was something we never said aloud. In a way, I’m still standing there, thinking about him every time I work. Though I could not see it then, my artistic identity was shaped most significantly from this experience. My resilience, my faith in Art stems from my belief in and love of life, something that this very personal experience with mortality made even stronger in my soul. In the face of something like my father’s suicide, the thing that makes the most sense for me to do and continue doing, as an Artist and a human being, is to celebrate life itself.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
The celebration of life I expanded upon in the previous response laid the foundation for what has become my more specific mission, carrying that overarching ethos, to make work that considers the ancestral cultures of my father’s Trinidad and Tobago and my mother’s Jamaica. The most recent and current work focuses on expanding the conversations about the histories of these places, analyzing how their pasts laid the groundwork for the present, and how to think about these foundations with consideration for a better collective future. These islands, and the rest of the Caribbean, are uniquely positioned such that they host globalized relationships with both North and South America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, but all for different reasons related to different histories begging to be shared with the rest of the world. Currently, most people see the Caribbean as paradise, a facade that belies the realness that understanding these places can offer when you go off the beaten path and gain a grounded perspective on life that has become alien to most of the modernized world. The feeling that the Caribbean passes on to people who visit, a feeling of warmth and light that never leaves them, deserves to be investigated, challenged, criticized, and broken down in order to be built up better. It is my job to initiate that those conversations within the realm of fine art, with the understanding that great works of art affect people in a way nothing else can by speaking directly to the spirit of the viewer.
Contact Info:
- Website: KingDavidArt.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kingdavidthalion/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KingDavidThaLion/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/_KingDavidArt_
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@kingdavidthalion?si=kSofcghFLPdABZAi
- Other: https://www.scullytomaskofoundation.com/exhibitions-1/kingdavid https://vimeo.com/231168046
Image Credits
447 SPACE Gallery Images by Michellé Hoban Images of King David by Scramual L. Packson and Eric Lee