I am an artist, born in Camberley, England during the blitz in 1941. In 1942 my family moved to Amesbury - the oldest known continuously occupied place in Britain. Growing up on an iron-age hill fort in a landscape of ancient earthworks, including the 5,000-year old monument of Stonehenge, I have an intense relationship with the ghosts of the ancients.
We moved to London in 1952, and in 1955 when I was 13-years old, I was lucky enough to have been accepted into Twickenham art-school in London, studying under inspirational teachers such as Mr. Kirby and Wentworth Sheilds, both trained at the Royal College of Art, influenced by the Bau’Haus. They taught “awareness” based on the teachings of Arts and Crafts movement founder, William Morris. While at art-school I also worked as an apprentice architectural blacksmith. Among other large projects, I worked on Admiralty Arch Gates that lead to Buckingham Palace.
Working in London, beginning in 1961, at advertising agencies and publishers as a graphic designer and art director, including with the influential Tom Wolsey at Town magazine, I went on to design many issues of the sixties London underground papers - including the psychedelic full color glossy, Oz.
Oz was just one of the publications I worked on that the Lord Chamberlain‘s censors and others successfully shut down. Oz was famously the subject of a 3-month long freedom of speech trial at the Old Bailey. The trial is the subject of a verbatim BBC movie you can find on YouTube with Hugh Grant playing the part of Richard Neville, the founder of Oz. John Lennon and Yoko Ono released a single, God Save Oz, to help fund the trial.
I left London in 1971 for San Francisco where I worked again as a freelance graphic designer, including for a while at Rolling Stone magazine and then with Margo St. James on Coyote; a campaign to decriminalize prostitution. I designed posters and helped produce the wildly successful Hookers Balls from 1973 to 1979 and again in 1997 when the ball returned for a single year. Working with editor Stewart Brand on the Whole Earth Catalog, I designed the covers and layouts of many books and magazines. I designed many books for Lloyd Kahn’s Shelter Publications, including Tiny Homes.
I am now living an hour north of San Francisco in El Verano, a tiny town next to the Pueblo of Sonoma, with my heart-throb Tamala. Having spent my previous life as a graphic designer, which always included painting as part of my skill set, I am now able to work full time as a painter, working in water colour, acrylic, and oil.
I look forward to furthering my adventures at the end of a brush.
~ David Wills