Statement

My work explores the interplay between memory, identity, and material form. While rooted in personal experiences of growing up queer in West Texas, the practice resists a singular narrative. Instead, I treat the landscape—both physical and emotional—as a shifting metaphor: one that blends regional mythologies, domestic textures, and abstracted spaces of desire, resilience, and transformation.

I often work with layered materials such as braided bed linens, embroidery, and paint, embracing pattern, surface, and repetition as ways to hold—and sometimes obscure—meaning. These tactile strategies evoke both comfort and camouflage, suggesting the complexity of inhabiting and expressing a queer self in different environments.

Influenced by genres like horror, fantasy, and speculative fiction, I create visual works that dwell in the uncertain: between the known and the imagined, the personal and the archetypal. Through play and recombination, I seek to build forms that feel at once familiar and mythic, anchored and open.

Bio

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 engages abstraction, queer domesticity, and regional mythologies through painting, textile, and mixed media.

Willburn’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), San Diego Art Institute, Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland), Dallas Contemporary, and Galleri Urbane. His solo exhibition Canyons and Plains opens at The Painting Center in New York in October 2025. He lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas, where he teaches visual art at Dallas College: El Centro Campus.