David Bates (American artist)

David Michael Bates (born 1952) is an American artist, who was born in, and continues to reside in, Dallas, Texas. He expected a BFA from Southern Methodist University in 1975 and an MFA from the same institution in 1978.

He is best known for his paintings of the Grassy Lakes region of Faulkner County, Arkansas, and the Gulf Coast. He afterward produces hand-painted sculptures in bronzes, aluminum, and wood. Whether painting upon canvas or on his sculptures, Bates's be active is characterized by bold, thick, lush brush strokes. Butchering the Hog, in the stock of the Honolulu Museum of Art, demonstrates the artist's use of bold expansive brush strokes, in a pretentiousness that is reminiscent of Naïve art.

Public collections holding works by Bates append the Art Museum of Southeast Texas (Beaumont), Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), the Dallas Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City).