David Connearn(b. 1952) read history at Cambridge before setting language aside and learning to draw as an alternate means of understanding and representing experience in the world. He studied Foundation (drawing) and BA Sculpture at Camberwell, and later completed his HDFA at the Slade School, UCL. He lives and works in London.

For him, drawing was not an intuitive gift—like a singing voice to be exercised with innocent certainty—but a field of techniques, methods and purposes within which to learn, play and experiment in the production and questioning of meaning. His practice has become a long term investigation of the basis of drawing, of what it is and how—in contradistinction to language—it communicates.

His drawing combines elements of figuration and method based techniques, literally drawing drawing, in a recursive practice which poses questions about agency - who is drawing? and what is being done? at the boundary of control and uncontrollability on which drawing takes place. It is a porous practice which is physically responsive to the conditions of its immediate context, and intellectually responsive to a range of issues about identity and environment that are intrinsically engaged.

His work is currently shown by galleries in London (https://www.patrickheide.com) and Berlin (https://www.galeriesusannealbrecht.de) and recently featured in Frieze Masters (London 2021).