Biography

Dave Kinsey was born in Pittsburgh in 1971 and attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and the Art Institute of Atlanta before moving to California in 1994 to pursue a career as a designer and fine artist. His work captures the universal essence of the human condition mainly through an energetic portrayal of urban figures. Working spontaneously, and utilizing a range of mediums, he constructs multi-layered, textured environments easily likened to the complexities of contemporary life. His portraits depict beings who are both triumphant in their defiant stance to their surroundings, and tragic, as they transmit a visual display of raw emotion and jangled nerves. The style and substance of his body of work originates in street art, and in keeping with his goal “to expose as many people to art as possible and to honor the power art has when it’s created and accepted”, Kinsey founded BLK/MRKT Gallery (now Kinsey/DesForges) in 2001, allowing him to provide a crossroads for a new movement of young and electrifying iconoclasts. In addition to these pursuits his fine art has been shown in galleries and museums worldwide, among these a recent exhibition at the URBIS Museum in Manchester and Art Brussels in Belgium. He has also been featured in such publications as The New York Times, Black Book, The Washington Post and BLK/MRKT One and Two, and invited to speak at numerous institutions such as The Art Center College of Design, UCLA, Montserrat College of Art and most recently, the Semi-Permanent conference in Sydney, Australia.