David Lilburn, one of the foremost printmakers working in Ireland today, was born in Limerick
in 1950. He studied History and Political Science at Trinity College Dublin, Lithography at the
Scuole D’Arte, Urbino, Italy and Art and Design at Limerick School of Art and Design, where he also taught for a number of years.

Drawing and printmaking have become two of his major concerns. One preoccupation central to his art for the last fifteen years concerns the concept of ‘mapping’ and how cities are represented in art. This work includes, not only topographic information, but personal experiences, observations, memories and references to history.

He has been exhibiting since 1977 and his work is represented in many public and private collections. He has won a number of awards. He has taken part and organised many international art events. These include: Art Network Europe which he established with Irish artist Mike Byrne, which included workshops and exhibitions in the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and Russia, 1992-95; exhibitions with Dutch artist Marielle van den Burgh in the Netherlands, 1996, and Limericks, with Dietrich Blodau and Des MacMahon, in Berlin, Havanna, Dublin and Skibereen, 1997-98.

His public commissions include work for the Irish Pavillion at the World Exposition, Expo 2000, Hanover, Germany. He has taken part in a number of international print conferences including Impact I, Bath, 1999; Cortona International Symposium, 2001, Impact III, Cape Town, 2003; Impact IV, Berlin/Poznan, 2005.

Aidan Dunne, art critic with The Irish Times, wrote in his review of the exhibition From Landscape in 2005 “David Lilburn, a wonderful graphic artist, habitually alludes to map-making in his informal, highly personal accounts of place. His works are repositories of all sorts of information, topographical and anecdotal, in the form of representations, notes, calculations, collage and asides, compendious attempts to remember lost time”.

Curriculum Vitae -pdf
David Lilburn

Essay - In Medias Res -pdf
Jim Savage
Artist and Curator