Artist Spotlight – David Farmer

David Farmer has been a studio artist at Art Center of the Bluegrass for more than two decades. His studio, on the second floor at 409 W. Main Street, is filled with colorful paintings, some finished and others in progress. Color, he said, is the main subject of his work.

He is well known for his paintings of trees. The perspective gives the viewer the feeling of standing among them deep in a forest. The white limbs look near enough to touch, branches reaching toward the sky while colorful leaves fall and play with light. 

“They’re just an armature,” David said, something for him to hang his colors on.

David tries to get to his studio every day. There are jars of brushes, and a work-in-progress sitting on a huge easel facing the tall windows that overlook Main Street. He was born wanting to create art, he said.

“I think everybody is genetically programmed toward something. They may not know what it is, and I spent most of my life learning what I didn’t want to do. I’ve never really been interested in anything else, and I’ve tried everything else,” David jokes.

David said he has been interested in color since the time he was born. “I just wanted to play with crayons. Then in World War II, there was such a shortage of everything, that if you got a pack of crayons, that’s it!” He would overhear people talking about him, and they would say, ‘He’s an artist.’ 

“When I went to school, it’s all I could do – I could draw.” He was not a good student but was able to go to college and study art thanks to his time in the service. He ended up attending art school in Columbus, Ohio, at what would become the Columbus College of Art and Design.

David said he does a lot of commissioned work, but the paintings of his trees…“These I do for me,” he said, gesturing toward the large piece he’s currently working on. “This is color.”

The subject isn’t that important to David, it’s all about the painting. “The subject of a painting is the painting,” he explained. “It’s the painting itself. When you go to the movies you don’t see a historical document about something, you’re going to see a movie, right?” Painting is the same, he said. It’s all about the texture and the color.

David grew up in Corbin, Kentucky, and moved to Danville in 1972. He and his wife, Carrie, graduated from Cumberland College in 1969. They made an attempt to live and work in Chicago but ended up back in Kentucky. In 1972, Carrie became a teacher and David found work at the unemployment office. He retired from that career in 1993. “The very day I was eligible,” David laughed.

“I tried to paint while I worked, but that’s not painting,” he said. “I always wanted to do it, I wanted to find the time to do it, and I finally did.”

David said being a studio artist at the Art Center has helped him connect to others. “I’ve made a lot of interesting connections,” he said. “If you’re interested in fishing or hunting, you need to hang around with people that do that kind of thing.” The Art Center allows David to have a place to meet others who are interested in his work.


David was one of the original artists associated with the Art Center when it opened more than 20 years ago. He currently shares a lot of his work on Facebook, and many of his paintings are available to purchase from him directly. Select pieces are available in Fern Curated Gifts at Art Center of the Bluegrass, 409 W. Main Street, Danville, Kentucky.