Doug David

Doug David was born in Seattle, Washington in 1971. His mother, Sandra Bluehorse, is from Sisseton-Wappiton Nakota Nation in North Dakota, and his father is Joe David, from Tla-O-Qui-Aht First Nations, in British Columbia. 

"I am the single father of 7 children, four of home age who live with me in Port Alberni, BC, located on central Vancouver Island. Both my parents are artists, so I don't really have a definite starting point for my career, I have always been around it and a lot of my early drawings I've been told were images mimicking the art being created around me by my parents. 

My father went in another direction from his family when I was 3 years old, so I was predominantly schooled by my mother in her traditional ways of the Plains Indians, with a lot of 2-dimensional painting and construction art like dreamcatchers, rawhide parfleches, painted shields and leather and beadwork. My first outlet for commercial art was at the Pike Place Market in Seattle Washington at the age of twelve with my mom. 

I spend a few summers growing up with my father up off of Tofino, where my father's people have lived for thousands of years. He had two cabins, a main house and a private room/cabin, on an isolated island belonging to our people. It was here at age 8 that my father first began teaching me the stories that demand these images as well as the care of and use of these tools, the knives and adzes, mauls and chisels. My father was a determined worker and I had the opportunity to see many incredible images emerge from rough blocks of ancient cedar, moments that I flash back to from time to time. 

I have been an artist my whole life but it is only part of me. I have lived and traveled from Alaska to Hawaii and from California to the Dakotas, along the way learning the local forms of expression. I have most enjoyed, aside from carving cedar, making Pahu drums from coconut trees to sell to the art market as well as hula halau's - Native dance schools of Hawaii, Maui and Oahu. 

My work is collected to almost every continent in many different forms, and I have participated in a handful of major exhibitions on the westcoast of Canada and the USA. 

Aside from my work as an artist, we are a sport family, I coach a jr. girls all-native basketball team for my daughters, as well as I play basketball myself. With my son, we train in martial arts together, and I help his peewee football team. If we can't be found, we are probably out for a run in the trail system here in beautiful Port Alberni."