AUSTRALIAN SELF-TAUGHT POLYMATH · PAINTER · SCENIC ARTIST · SIGNWRITER · MAKER, WITH A 55+ YEAR CAREER
David Emerson Thomas was born in Adelaide in 1946 and moved to Melbourne in 1960. “Books never taught me much—work did,” he once said. A profoundly hands-on learner, he built a life in craft and picture-making. “That bias toward the hands-on has shaped everything I’ve made since—pictures, sets, signs, walls, gardens, props, furniture. If it needed doing, I learned how.”
