David Ryan is an outsider artist who works out of various squats around Dublin. His current projects include several series of oil paintings.
He also participates in festival builds and is a committed member of the infamous Irish Underground piano bar crew at Glastonbury, and the Bog Cottage at Electric Picnic.
He has been painting continuously from a young age and is currently refining his own techniques in photo-realistic oil painting for the completion of two series, the Piano Bar at Glastonbury and the Army Barracks in Belgrade.
Previous to this his recent work had focused on disused spaces and dereliction before moving into documenting the spaces of Grangegorman ‘Squat-City’ in Dublin.
David was born in Dublin in 1986 and initially raised in Donegal. His father worked globally in telecommunications and as such was well traveled by his teens, and had been exposed to a variety of different cultures. David began painting scenes centered on sunsets and sunrises from the different places he had been.
It was not long until many friends and family had paintings or murals on their walls. His first exhibition was organised in a hotel in Dun-Laoghaire at nineteen, and began exhibiting work in galleries a year later.
Money never motivated David whatsoever. He prefered to use his art for those around him and scoffed at all forms of idolatry. Professionally he had began training as an electrical apprentice, a plumber, began an art portfolio course, left it to be a special effects technician, trained as a C.A.D technician and even began an education in sustainable-construction, as he considered these useful skills in what was to him a corrupt and plastic world. Stone, steel and timber can all be found in David’s store of materials.
In his late twenties David discovered Grangegorman and was introduced to various sub-culture groups active in Dublin and saw the good work they were doing both there and abroad. He abandoned his own personal development to work alongside those building lives with next to nothing, putting his many skills to good use. The professional painting picked up when he saw that it was indeed a viable outlet for helping others, and dedicates each project to a particular cause, group or person. Up to late 2017 he had worked primarily with salvaged acrylic on breadboards given by bread-truck delivery drivers. Now a friend helps David to build his own large canvasses and he is refining his use of oils in order to begin work on his next two projects, The army barracks in Belgrade and The secret Irish underground piano-bar.
