David Gibson was born and raised in Palo Alto, California, and received his B.F.A. and Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1971, where he studied under the guidance of Joan Brown, Rod Titus and Jack Jefferson, among others.
Mr. Gibson's focus since the early 1980's has been pastel, though he has continued to work in oil, graphite, and in monotype up to the present. He has exhibited his work in such varied places as St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park and the Triton Museum in Santa Clara, California; Printworks Gallery and Fairweather Hardin Gallery in Chicago; Bologna and Landi Gallery in East Hampton, New York; The Ute Stebich Gallery in Lenox, Massachusetts; and Galerie St-Ambroise, in Montreal, Quebec.
Gibson's most gratifying accomplishments, however, have been the awards he has received as a resident and fellow at a number of foundations: The Montalvo Center and the Djerassi Foundation in California, The Bemis Foundation in Omaha, Nebraska, The Ragdale Foundation, in Illinois, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others. The time, space, and support that these institutions have given him has contributed immeasurably to his success as an artist.
"David Gibson is a perfectly wonderful draughtsman. He thinks in terms of line... He celebrates this incredible sense of line - over and over again... these are wonderful drawings, but Mr. Gibson imbues them with something else because he is positively crazy about the synonymous functions of line and light... Most other drawings of this sort, with their handlings of light and talk about color are hogwash, but in Mr. Gibson's hands they are not. The work is honest and it's true, and it will go elsewhere..."
Harry Bouras, WFMT radio, Chicago, 1989