David Mulholland was born on 12 September 1946 at Henry Street, South Bank, where he spent his early years with his mother, Jean, father, Jim and older brother Kenneth. Like most men in the town, his father worked in the local steelworks.
David attended Cromwell Road Junior School and then Victoria Street Secondary Modern. Although he showed a penchant for sports, playing in the school football team for instance, from a very early age his eyes were set on other goals. The Art teacher who taught at Victoria Street at the time remembers being approached by an 11-year-old David who said "Mr. Dalton, I want to be an artist. Can you help me?" Mr. Dalton could and did. David clearly had a precocious talent and, in Mr. Dalton he had found someone able, and willing, to nourish it. It seems that most of David's time at Victoria Street was spent either in the art room or on the football field. This was clearly an extraordinary time at the school. Several of David's contemporaries went on to pursue art-related careers; either as full-time artists, art teachers or graphic designers.
When David left Victoria Street at the age of 15, he attended Cleveland College of Art in Middlesbrough (1962 - 5) as a full-time student. He continued to develop under the influence of noted north-east painter Joe Cole and won a prestigious scholarship to study at the Byam Shaw School of Painting and Drawing in London. He made such an impression there that the Principal of the school, Maurice de Sausmarez, personally recommended him for a place at the Royal College of Art, with the suggestion that all he needed was "opportunity and a free rein". The College duly offered David a place which he took up in 1968, and the free rein recommended by Maurice de Sausmarez was soon provided by RCA tutors, since it was clear to them that David's heart was still solidly located in Teesside and that he was desperate to explore his relationship with that environment through his art. David deeply appreciated the learning environment provided by the college but, as one of his tutors at RCA, Mr Bateson Mason asserted shortly after David's graduation, "it was clear that London could not contain him for long". After a few weeks there, he would feel compelled to "restore his intense visual memory in the north" and he "invariably returned to London with a mass of new work".
After graduating from the Royal College in 1971, with a Master of Arts degree, David held a successful exhibition (20 May - 10 June 1972) of 106 drawings and paintings at Middlesbrough Art Gallery. The pictures on show dated from as early as 1960 - when David was only 14 - but the vast majority were produced during his time at the Royal College, indicating just how well he had used the free rein accorded to him. Only a few of the drawings on show (powerful statements about homelessness) related to London-based subjects, the rest of the work being focused on Teesside and North Yorkshire. In a review of the exhibition published in the Evening Gazette of 21 June 1972, Margaret Hoggarth rejoiced that:
At last Teesside has an artist who sees and feels and paints the very essence of Teesside in all its forms, with sincerity, keen perception and a considerable emotional punch ... there is a restless searching quality and deep compassion for human situations. He draws pubs, blast furnaces, back gardens from the heart of Teesside, the loneliness and loveliness of Staithes by night and the windswept magnificence of our countryside with complete confidence and conviction.
After the exhibition, David set off on a fellowship as an Artist at Sea granted by the Seafarer's Education Service. He sailed the world, for two years, on various merchant ships provided art tutorship to seafarers and continued with his own painting and drawing, for which he gained considerable inspiration from life aboard ship, the sea and the exotic places that he visited. He brought a large body of work back with him but sold a lot in places he visited and to his shipmates. Other work had to stay in situ; notably cloud formations which he painted in a ship's swimming pool so that swimmers seemed to be diving into the sky.
When David's time at sea was over, it was inevitable that he would return to the South Bank area. He had married Lorna between sea-trips and they moved to a house on Normanby Road, where their children Daniel, Rebecca, Matthew and Adam were born. The responsibilities associated with providing for a family were not easy to manage given the economic insecurity that tends to be the lot of the full-time artist, so David did a post-graduate degree in education and took employment teaching art in local schools. He did not find it easy to combine the roles of artist, teacher, husband and father, but was able to accumulate sufficient new work - this time including sculpture as well as paintings and drawings - for an exhibition at Chapel Beck Gallery, Guisborough.
David and Lorna separated in 1980, and they moved out of the house on Normanby Road. Lorna and the children moved away from Teesside, while David was transient for a few years during which it was a case of anywhere he hung his coat was home, He then married Ellen in 1986 and lived with her, and later their daughter Mary, in Normanby, but by the time David retired from teaching, in 1991, he was transient again. He made several moves in and out of the family home until spending some time living alone in a caravan at Ellerby before making his final move into Staithes where, after contracting cancer of the throat, he died in 2005 at the age of 59. He is buried at Hinderwell Cemetery.
As this website shows, David produced extraordinary pieces of art through all stages of an eventful life. It remains a mystery how someone who produced the quality and range of work shown could have died virtually unknown outside of a small body of collectors. This has probably much to do with his approach to his work. He had little interest in self promotion and, although he has exhibited in prestigious galleries and sold to institutions and private collectors throughout the world, survived largely by selling pictures to acquaintances, sometimes for beer money. He was also apt to trade pictures for goods and services, to pay his bills off with them and to give them as gifts. It was not unknown for him to give pictures away just so that they would have a good home.
Margaret Hoggarth finished her review of David's 1972 exhibition by asking whether "it is too much to hope that Teesside will be able to appreciate both his talents and his caring and, better still, hold them in future years". Teesside and its surrounding areas clearly held David throughout his life but it is questionable whether Teesside held onto and valued David in the way that it ought to have done. Nevertheless, this website is a testament to the skill, empathy and compassion that went into David's representation of the area, which is something that is no doubt very much appreciated by all those people who have contributed pictures.
Pete McCarthy
David attended Cromwell Road Junior School and then Victoria Street Secondary Modern. Although he showed a penchant for sports, playing in the school football team for instance, from a very early age his eyes were set on other goals. The Art teacher who taught at Victoria Street at the time remembers being approached by an 11-year-old David who said "Mr. Dalton, I want to be an artist. Can you help me?" Mr. Dalton could and did. David clearly had a precocious talent and, in Mr. Dalton he had found someone able, and willing, to nourish it. It seems that most of David's time at Victoria Street was spent either in the art room or on the football field. This was clearly an extraordinary time at the school. Several of David's contemporaries went on to pursue art-related careers; either as full-time artists, art teachers or graphic designers.
When David left Victoria Street at the age of 15, he attended Cleveland College of Art in Middlesbrough (1962 - 5) as a full-time student. He continued to develop under the influence of noted north-east painter Joe Cole and won a prestigious scholarship to study at the Byam Shaw School of Painting and Drawing in London. He made such an impression there that the Principal of the school, Maurice de Sausmarez, personally recommended him for a place at the Royal College of Art, with the suggestion that all he needed was "opportunity and a free rein". The College duly offered David a place which he took up in 1968, and the free rein recommended by Maurice de Sausmarez was soon provided by RCA tutors, since it was clear to them that David's heart was still solidly located in Teesside and that he was desperate to explore his relationship with that environment through his art. David deeply appreciated the learning environment provided by the college but, as one of his tutors at RCA, Mr Bateson Mason asserted shortly after David's graduation, "it was clear that London could not contain him for long". After a few weeks there, he would feel compelled to "restore his intense visual memory in the north" and he "invariably returned to London with a mass of new work".
After graduating from the Royal College in 1971, with a Master of Arts degree, David held a successful exhibition (20 May - 10 June 1972) of 106 drawings and paintings at Middlesbrough Art Gallery. The pictures on show dated from as early as 1960 - when David was only 14 - but the vast majority were produced during his time at the Royal College, indicating just how well he had used the free rein accorded to him. Only a few of the drawings on show (powerful statements about homelessness) related to London-based subjects, the rest of the work being focused on Teesside and North Yorkshire. In a review of the exhibition published in the Evening Gazette of 21 June 1972, Margaret Hoggarth rejoiced that:
At last Teesside has an artist who sees and feels and paints the very essence of Teesside in all its forms, with sincerity, keen perception and a considerable emotional punch ... there is a restless searching quality and deep compassion for human situations. He draws pubs, blast furnaces, back gardens from the heart of Teesside, the loneliness and loveliness of Staithes by night and the windswept magnificence of our countryside with complete confidence and conviction.
After the exhibition, David set off on a fellowship as an Artist at Sea granted by the Seafarer's Education Service. He sailed the world, for two years, on various merchant ships provided art tutorship to seafarers and continued with his own painting and drawing, for which he gained considerable inspiration from life aboard ship, the sea and the exotic places that he visited. He brought a large body of work back with him but sold a lot in places he visited and to his shipmates. Other work had to stay in situ; notably cloud formations which he painted in a ship's swimming pool so that swimmers seemed to be diving into the sky.
When David's time at sea was over, it was inevitable that he would return to the South Bank area. He had married Lorna between sea-trips and they moved to a house on Normanby Road, where their children Daniel, Rebecca, Matthew and Adam were born. The responsibilities associated with providing for a family were not easy to manage given the economic insecurity that tends to be the lot of the full-time artist, so David did a post-graduate degree in education and took employment teaching art in local schools. He did not find it easy to combine the roles of artist, teacher, husband and father, but was able to accumulate sufficient new work - this time including sculpture as well as paintings and drawings - for an exhibition at Chapel Beck Gallery, Guisborough.
David and Lorna separated in 1980, and they moved out of the house on Normanby Road. Lorna and the children moved away from Teesside, while David was transient for a few years during which it was a case of anywhere he hung his coat was home, He then married Ellen in 1986 and lived with her, and later their daughter Mary, in Normanby, but by the time David retired from teaching, in 1991, he was transient again. He made several moves in and out of the family home until spending some time living alone in a caravan at Ellerby before making his final move into Staithes where, after contracting cancer of the throat, he died in 2005 at the age of 59. He is buried at Hinderwell Cemetery.
As this website shows, David produced extraordinary pieces of art through all stages of an eventful life. It remains a mystery how someone who produced the quality and range of work shown could have died virtually unknown outside of a small body of collectors. This has probably much to do with his approach to his work. He had little interest in self promotion and, although he has exhibited in prestigious galleries and sold to institutions and private collectors throughout the world, survived largely by selling pictures to acquaintances, sometimes for beer money. He was also apt to trade pictures for goods and services, to pay his bills off with them and to give them as gifts. It was not unknown for him to give pictures away just so that they would have a good home.
Margaret Hoggarth finished her review of David's 1972 exhibition by asking whether "it is too much to hope that Teesside will be able to appreciate both his talents and his caring and, better still, hold them in future years". Teesside and its surrounding areas clearly held David throughout his life but it is questionable whether Teesside held onto and valued David in the way that it ought to have done. Nevertheless, this website is a testament to the skill, empathy and compassion that went into David's representation of the area, which is something that is no doubt very much appreciated by all those people who have contributed pictures.
Pete McCarthy