David Ralph was born in Warrnambool, Victoria and is based between Melbourne and Leipzig. He is a contemporary artist whose subjects reflect on how built environments, cities and  dwellings shape human experiences and forge identities. His paintings address the psychology of architectural spaces and what they can inform about the people responsible for them, and those who inhabit them. Recent bodies of work have specifically exampled a reconnection with the natural world, what the artist describes as the ‘architecture of escape,’ that is escaping the urban environment by way of mobile homes, caravans, cabins and ‘green’ dwellings. Ralph identifies as a contemporary painter whose use of enduring mediums such as oil paint and pencil drawing acknowledges newer forms of media and digital technology as a source of inspiration and its potential to create hybrid abstract/representational imagery. 

David holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts and an MA (Fine Art) from the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Since the early 2000s Ralph has held solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, and London, and featured in curated group exhibitions in Australia, Germany, New York, London and Paris. He is a former Sulman Prize finalist and recipient of the Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship. In 2013 Ralph was the recipient of the Australia Council, Visual Arts Board skills and arts development grant, which allowed him to undertake the LIA Leipzig International Art Program in Germany.