After a foundation year at Northampton David went on to Liverpool College of Art to study painting, but dropped out after just one term. In his twenties he spent almost ten years in Japan, funding a three-year course at Sophia University by teaching English as a foreign language. He returned to the UK as an illustrator with his young family, painting portraits of friends and family in his spare time. Since those early days he has painted people from all walks of life and two pf his portraits now hang in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery. He has had solo exhibitions in Bath and London. He set up Bath Artists' Studios in 1996, and had a studio there for many years before moving to Devizes in 2013, where he now lives and works.