Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, David Underwood has spent his professional life in East Tennessee. After earning his MFA in Studio Art at Florida State University in 1990, Underwood taught Art and Photography at Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City, TN, for 35 years, retiring in May 2025. At Carson-Newman University, he taught 22 different courses, chaired the Art Department for 13 years, and served as Director of Exhibitions for 34 years.

Underwood’s mixed-media and photographic artwork is included in the permanent collections of 16 art museums around the USA, including the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He has held more than 35 solo exhibitions and had work included in more than 150 group exhibitions in various locations from New York, New York, to Sacramento, California. His artmaking practice Includes explorations in drawing, analog & digital photography, painting, assemblage, mixed-media, image-text, and unique presentation methods.

Underwood is represented by The Haen Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina; and by The Mirrorball Gallery, in Tryon, North Carolina. His website is www.underwoodartworks.com; and his Instagram handle is @underwoodartworks.

My composite photographs and mixed-media work involving multiple photographs and other media expands the language of Photography beyond the imitations of single-frame imagery. I combine original photographs with drawing, painting, text, and/or found objects to create expanded meaning. Sometimes the photographs in an artwork were all made at the same time and location, but more often the photographs were made many miles and perhaps many years apart, and the reasons for the joining and juxtapositions relate to both potential content and pure aesthetics. I use a variety of photographic materials and methods, including digital, analog, and alternative/antique techniques.

Materialness and physicality are important in my work. I use substrates of museum board, paper, and wood for various different artworks, sometimes combined with sheet metal, multiple painted surfaces, or unique framing. I make all my photographs and painted surfaces as archival as possible for rich longevity, but I also often drive nails or staples directly though these surfaces. My image-text works reveal readable text within the artworks, but the images and text are not meant to necessarily illustrate each other. Instead, the images (of either sharp photographs or minimalistic painting) and the text offer the viewer multiple pathways of interpretation and meaning.