David Carpanini is one of Wales’ most well  known and respected artists. He was born in the Afan valley in Glamorgan in 1946 and trained at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, Cheltenham; the Royal College of Art; and the University of Reading.

.He was Professor of Art at the University of Wolverhampton from 1992 to 2000 and President of the Royal Society of Painter - Printmakers from 1995 to 2003.

Although much of his adult life has been spent in England his paintings, drawings and etchings are almost entirely devoted to the presentation of the valleys and former mining communities of South Wales where he was brought up. Lonely figures, scarred landscapes, perching terraces of houses and ragged roadside sheep are the images to which he is faithful and to which he attributes the development of his creative imagination.

He is a painter and printmaker devoted to the plain complete statement which leaves little to chance and yet, if made with sufficient authority can distil poetry from those ordinary and everyday facts which can go almost unnoticed by most of us. Although solidly representational his pictures speak eloquently of abstracts – fear, isolation, and survival. They are set in Wales but the statements he makes are not confined to the Welsh valleys the feelings they evoke are international.

“All my paintings and prints are studio assemblages, unhurried distillations of sketchbook observations and visual memories. I have always made extensive use of small notebooks. These are working tools in which I make records of both a graphic and literary nature. These observations are not always put to immediate use; indeed months, even years may elapse before a particular theme is explored further. It is from this reservoir of materials that my pictures grow. The design and manner of any work arises as a natural process of growth and evolution; as an extension of object and purpose, not imposed in a preconceived way.”

David Carpanini is a member of many prestigious groups and he was the first Welsh President of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (RE). For many years his work has been included in the Royal Academy Annual  Summer exhibition and he has exhibited in many group and solo exhibitions in the UK and abroad.

His work has been the subject of three television documentaries and has been acquired by numerous prestigious collections including; the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, Newport Museum and Art Gallery, Her Majesty the Queen, Windsor, National Museum of Wales, National Library of Wales, Contemporary Art Society of Wales, British Steel, Rank Xerox, British National Oil Corporation, National Coal Board, Government Art Collection DOE, Ashmolean Museum Oxford, Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge as well as many University and College collections.

David Carpanini was elected: RE 1982 (ARE 1979); RWA 1983 (ARWA 1977); RBA 1976; NEAC 1983; RCA 1992; Hon RWS 1996; Hon RBSA 2000.