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Artist's Profile: David Anthony Khoury was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on the 21st October, 1938. When not much more than a toddler, his mother would often leave him with her sister Rosie Diab (who was an amateur artist) when she went to help his father in their shop. His aunt would give him her old brushes and paints, pencils and crayons to keep him amused. When her husband died, his aunt came and lived in their home with the family. David was 5 or 6 years old at the time. It was quite magical to him how she could transform a white canvas or board into something beautiful, a Highland stag ("Monarch of the Glen"), a sailing ship or a vase of roses etcetera - and so a love of painting and drawing took root. Right through Primary and High School, art was almost always the subject that gained him his highest grades, but he never considered it more than a 'fun thing' which he enjoyed, - his dream was to fly aircraft. He had hoped to join the Air Force as a pilot, but when that didn't work out, he had to do a whole 're-think' about a career and his future. It was only then that he realised what an important place drawing actually held in his heart and mind. A poorly illustrated book held no attraction for him. With great anticipation he awaited each weeks Sunday paper which held the 'Prince Valiant' serial comic with Hal Foster's well researched, authentic and beautifully executed drawings ( he still has many of them which he used to collect in sequence.) Among other artists whose work inspired him were: the American artists Andrew Wyeth, Norman Rockwell and Frederick Remington. Rembrandt's amazing use of light and shadow, the luminosity of his portraits and the depth of character he was able to capture was to David awe-inspiring. When he left High School, he approached the Johannesburg Technical College's Art Department, hoping to enrol in a course on story illustration. He was informed by the then principal Professor Robert Bain that the only courses available were the Fine Art and Commercial Art courses. Prof. Bain suggested he take the Commercial Art course, a three year course, in which, in the middle of the second year one of the subjects was Illustration. And so he enrolled, but was not very enthusiastic about the commercial art part of it, - lettering, designing cereal box & jam tin labels, billboard ads. etc. The subjects he did enjoy and really appreciated were Perspective, Portraiture, Figure Study and Composition, knowing that these would be vital to a career as an illustrator. In the course, they had just begun on one or two illustration projects when David got a job doing magazine illustrations and also comic books. He had only done a year and a half of the three year course when he left. His passion for drawing was such that wherever he went, he would have his sketch-pad, anatomy and perspective books with him, sketching interesting characters on the bus, sitting on a park bench, in a restaurant or wherever he came across them, - referring to his anatomy book studying the underlying bone and muscle structure. Other subjects that also greatly interested David were old buildings, stables, mills, mine-heads, deserted mine-dumps, rusted red steel, weathered timber, flaking paint etc. - subjects which each held its own story. Sometimes the story seemed traceable, with others, secretive, mysterious, sometimes ominous, forbidding. Above all, David loves drawing horses and at one stage thought he would specialise in horse illustrations and paintings. David began painting pictures as works of art in themselves (and not as an illustration for a story) about two years after leaving Art School. He began working in oils, which he still considers his favourite medium, although, as can be seen on the website, he works equally well in acrylics, watercolour, pencil, colour pencil or ballpoint pen. At the age of 19 he began entering his work in the Witwatersrand Agricultural Society's Rand Easter Show, winning First prize for every work he entered and on occasion winning First and Second prize. For 3 of his paintings he was awarded 'Special Prize' which earned him Bronze and Silver Medals. In 1962 he won First Prize in all five categories he entered in, and a "Special Prize" for one of them. This outstanding achievement earned him the comment from the famous (now deceased) South African artist W.H.Coetzer - one of the judges-quoted in a Transvaal Regional News Bulletin on 7th April 1962 – "An artist, whose paintings, according to Mr W H Coetzer, are sometimes even better than those of Tretchikoff, has been discovered at the Rand Easter Show. He is Mr. David Khoury, a young Johannesburg resident, who won all the first prizes in the Home craft section's Arts classes. Mr. Coetzer, who judged the paintings on show, says that he has never seen such realism in the work of a South African artist." Around the same time that he began entering his work at the Rand Easter Show (1957), he and his aunt also exhibited their work with the newly formed "Art in the Park' group in Joubert Park, Johannesburg (where the Johannesburg Art Gallery is situated.) David at that stage was not selling his work, but just showing it, as he was trying to get a collection together to have a one-man exhibition. Not living off his paintings, he had to have other employment to earn a living, many times turning down very lucrative offers from keen/interested collectors. Working all week long at a regular job, and finding very little time to do any meaningful painting over the week-ends, David decided in January 1981, to move the family from Johannesburg where he had lived all his life, to a small town in the Eastern Cape called Bedford. By selling the home in Johannesburg, he was able to buy a home in Bedford at a considerably lower price. This enabled him for the first time to devote all his time to painting. Working to the detail and perfection he strives for, he does not 'churn out' a lot of paintings, but rather attempts to make each one special, "a precious jewel" as one of the recent purchasers of a painting of his commented. David loves working from life "plein air" where possible, which often entails driving out to a scene he's working on, day after day, at the same time, so that light and shadows appear consistent. Most of his paintings require months of painstaking, careful work, the detail of which often amazes viewers. There have been periods when he has lived and worked out of his 'mobile studio', ( a 1969 Datsun LDV with a canopy he built himself), when he's worked in areas far from home. David is considered by many to be one of the top realist artists in South Africa. In 2002 he won the Premier's Art and Culture Award in the category Visual Arts. He has exhibited at the Crake Gallery, Johannesburg; the Natalie Knight Gallery, Johannesburg; Grahamstown Festival of the Arts; The Nederburg Knysna Arts Experience; Chris Tugwell Gallery, Knysna; The Halyards Hotel, Port Alfred; and in 2002, the Warstone Gallery, Birmingham, England. Since 2000 to the present, he has run his own gallery in Bedford in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, where his own work and the work of other South African artists is on display. He has paintings in Corporate and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, United States of America, Canada, Germany, Holland, Lebanon and, of course, in South Africa. His wife MaryJane who he married in 1970, has always been an inspiration to him, supportive and encouraging through the good and the tough times that make up the life of an artist.........."It's a feast or a famine existence" he said. They have three children Lance, Gail and Mark all of whom are very artistic and musical, although only their eldest son Lance has gone into art professionally. David and MaryJane are also the proud grandparents of three grandsons, Reece, Jonathan and Tristan. David considers his talent to draw and paint a gift from God. He is a deeply committed Christian whose faith is central to who he is and what he does.
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