David Bates

Bates was born in Dallas, Texas, and received both his B.F.A. and M.F.A from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Before establishing himself as a painter, he experimented with video and performance art as well as folk art, but ultimately found that his finest mode of expression lay with the brush. A defining experience in 1982 influenced Bates's painting from that point on. It was that year that the artist visited for the first time the rural fishing grounds of Grassy Lake in Arkansas. The unspoiled swamplands and the people that interacted with them provided him with much inspiration, as seen in "Off the Trail".