David Willburn (b. 1970, Fort Stockton, TX) is a visual artist whose work draws from the physical and social landscapes of his West Texas upbringing. His practice explores abstraction, queer domesticity, and regional mythologies through painting, textile, and mixed-media processes that emphasize material presence and surface.

Willburn’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), The Painting Center (New York), the San Diego Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland), and Dallas Contemporary. He lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas, and teaches visual art at Dallas College: El Centro Campus in Dallas.

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“The palette and modest scale of [Willburn’s] current work are not new developments; rather, they reflect a sustained aesthetic sensibility and conceptual focus that have been present throughout his career. His materials are from the ephemera of daily life—an approach seen in his use of recycled materials like cardboard and his husband’s shirt cuffs. He has always been interested in how these seemingly insignificant items could hold narrative weight and become ‘souvenirs of a life.’ This conceptual thread is a direct link between his past and present work.”

Excerpt from an essay by Jodi Hays, written for Canyons and Plains, The Painting Center, 2025.

“Willburn’s expertise and handicraft are not about animation, breathing life into the un-living, but getting at the life that is already there, immanent to the thing. Willburn is intrigued with ‘how objects and spaces retain the memories of events.’ And they are not luxurious or elite things, but rather those that are at once useful and disinterested, central to daily function but often overlooked. They are the simple things that fill our life, that go unnoticed but without which we would be lost.”

Excerpt from “The Object-Oriented Ontology of David Willburn’s Embroidered Paintings”, by Charissa Terranova, 2016.