Born in 1985 in Nakuru, Kenya, David Thuku is a painter and mixed media artist currently living and working in Nairobi. A recipient of the Langalanga Scholarship Fund (a U.K based Charity Organisation that supports the education of bright and needy Kenyan children and young adults), David graduated from the BuruBuru Institute of Fine Arts in 2009. In 2013 he co-founded Brush-Tu Art Studio (www.brushtu.co.ke), a creative arts collective providing artists with studio space and collaborative exchange, in 2016 he joined the then Kuona Trust Arts Centre, but he currently works from The Kobo Trust.

David Thuku’s current bodies of work rotate around movement, spaces (temporary spaces), how we relate with the spaces we occupy, and also how our identities change by being in specific spaces. He uses repeated motifs to indicate a spatial environment and character. The pattern has particular significance in his works. These create a sense of space, perspective, and comparison and signify continuity. He works in a variety of media, from conventional oil paint on canvas to a more recent focus on paper. He cuts and peels paper away to reveal carefully constructed images.  These works on paper explore the nature of social structure, identity, and urban migration through semi-abstract portraits. They analyze the everyday space we occupy, peeling layers away to uncover hidden dimensions.