David French Archives a Shifting Landscape with Paintings

With his long hair and grey beard, David French is always a recognizable presence at art fairs and festivals around Charlotte, but even more familiar are his paintings, which capture the most beloved storefronts, scenes and sights of the Queen City in French’s signature style. 

For nearly 20 years, French has become wildly popular for the way he captures urban landscapes in a style that we’ll call whimsical realism. In a rapidly changing city where businesses and historic buildings can be there one day and gone the next, French acts as a documentarian of sorts, capturing angles of the city for specific moments in time.   

French says he always enjoyed drawing, a pastime that he turned to while daydreaming in class as a kid. He tried to teach himself how to paint in his late teens, and found a fortunate break when he crossed paths with Starr Davis, a professional mural artist living in NoDa at the time. Davis was looking for an assistant and French told her he would be happy to work for free just for the experience.

One of the most important lessons he took from Davis was that he wasn’t ready to transition into the painting world. 

“I stopped painting and focused on drawing for seven years,” he told Queen City Nerve. “I did thousands of charcoal drawings. That’s the lesson the great masters would teach you: Draw first. So I did.”

David French begins documenting restaurants on the verge of closure 

While working toward an associates degree from Central Piedmont Community College in 2006, needing one last design credit to get it, he found himself wandering the Uptown campus looking for an angle to paint when it dawned on him he should paint Athens Restaurant, a 43-year-old Greek diner that had just closed down on the outskirts of the campus and was slated for demolition. 

He painted Athens onsite over a series of days and received some unexpected extra credit in the form of media exposure. News teams visited to interview him about his work and people stopped constantly to share their stories about the restaurant. 

French learned of two more imminent closures soon thereafter: The Andersons restaurant on Elizabeth Avenue and The Coffee Cup, one of Charlotte’s first integrated restaurants, on South Clarkson Street. Both establishments had been in business for 60 years or more and both were set to close.

French saw the news as “development swallowing the things we love, a standard story seen over and over again in Charlotte.” He decided he would paint The Andersons, with its sign proclaiming “The World’s Best Pecan Pie,” as his own special way of preserving its memory before its closure in 2006. 

During that time, French was working as a server at The Dunhill Hotel. Bragg Financial held its company Christmas dinner in a private room at the hotel and French was tasked with serving the team. Owner Frank Bragg asked about his work and French filled him in about his paintings, specifically the ones he was working on at the time.

Bragg said, “My business is blocks away from [Athens and Andersons]. I need to see your paintings. I want to hang them in my lobby if they’re good.” 

Bragg bought both of the works and asked what he was doing next. French mentioned The Coffee Cup and Bragg offered to buy that too. Once that was finished, Bragg once again asked what he had planned. When he didn’t have an answer, Bragg commissioned him to paint a Charlotte skyline, something he would become known for in the years to follow.

Meanwhile, his paintings of Athens, Andersons and The Coffee Cup continued to build buzz. Even with the originals claimed by Bragg, prints of the pieces were selling fast. 

Selling prints allowed French to capitalize on the countless hours he had spent on each work, and a realistic business model began to materialize for the aspiring artist. He began making the rounds at art pop-ups and festivals, beginning with Festival in the Park in 2007, which was a huge success for him. 

When not at sanctioned events, he would sell art on the street in NoDa, joining other artists on Friday nights to capitalize on the popularity of the neighborhood’s famed gallery crawls. His popularity continued to rise and French was able to quit his job and pursue art full-time. 

Now you can find French showcasing his work at King’s Drive Art Walk, Taste of Charlotte, Matthews Alive, the Southern Christmas Show, Olde Mecklenburg Brewery’s Christmas market and a range of local vendor markets. Of course, he’s become a fixture at the annual Festival in the Park, which he credits with sending him on the track to becoming a full-time artist. 

Looking back on personal favorites and bestsellers

Over the years, certain pieces have fluctuated in popularity for French, but one thing has stayed consistent for him over the years: Skylines are always bestsellers. Perhaps the most popular for him has been his depiction of a Fourth Ward sunset. 

Other pieces rise and fall. The Penguin Drive-In, a Plaza Midwood restaurant that closed in 2014, was far and away his most popular piece for years, thanks in part to its local spin on van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” but more recently it has “faded into obscurity,” he explained, as new people move into the city and people forget about the iconic establishment. 

His Bank of America Stadium painting is always a top seller when the team is doing well, but not so much recently. Other top sellers include his painting of Rosie’s Wine Garden and another called “Carolina Blue,” which features the stadium in the foreground of a detailed skyline shot on a clear, sunny day and has been turned into a jigsaw puzzle that can sometimes be found at Paper Skyscraper (out of stock at the time of this writing).

Despite all the new implants moving into the city, longtime Charlotteans still look to French to bring back memories of businesses that are no longer there — spots like Zack’s Hamburgers or Soul Gastrolounge. 

“They’re places that we all miss, and they’re places near and dear to the heart — places you don’t know meant so much until they’re gone.” 

According to him, it was the memories associated with them, whether it was a first date, an anniversary dinner, or a place they met a loved one. “So once a restaurant or business closes, no longer can someone have their first date there anymore.” 

When I asked which of his paintings hold special meaning for him, he diverted the attention away from himself: “Let’s skip what they mean to me and what they mean to the people in them.” 

He described how his painting of Salud Cerveceria and Beer Shop was commissioned by a couple who told him it’s their favorite date spot. They can be seen at the bottom right of the painting walking toward the door. A mother commissioned a painting of herself and her daughter at Rosie’s during a time when she didn’t yet know her daughter was pregnant. It’s titled “Secret at Rosie’s.” 

Though realism pervades in his paintings, he often adds touches of the fantastical — sometimes subtle and sometimes not so much. 

In one painting of Thirsty Beaver Saloon, the apartment buildings that tower over the small pool hall are depicted as men in suits, representing the developers who would like nothing more than to see the Thirsty Beaver razed to the ground. 

In many of his nighttime paintings, the starscapes amount to an artwork within the artwork, showing scenes of a hitter swinging away over Truist Field, for example, or a festival taking place in the sky above Uptown Charlotte. 

Trials and tribulations of the ‘ultimate expert’

French said the best part of his job is that he gets to make people happy. It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t get to fulfill everyone’s wishes, as many people request familial scenes such as portraits of loved ones or dogs. 

“I try to limit myself to paintings that would make sense to be hanging on the wall of my booth,” he said. 

He charges $30 an hour for commissions, and a nice original often runs from $800 to a few thousand dollars. His mounted prints that he sells at festivals can go from $45 up to $350 depending on size. 

The affordability of his artwork makes it more accessible, and in some cases collectibles. He regularly has people buy dozens of paper prints from him at once or four to five mounted prints in hopes of starting a collection. 

Institutions like Bank of North Carolina in SouthPark and the Microsoft campus in southwest Charlotte have bought more than 30 pieces to decorate their buildings. His original customer, Frank Bragg, owns at least a dozen of his originals. 

French has become a part of the community that he portrays, but onsite painting isn’t always easy. 

“I’ve been mugged live onsite painting a picture,” he recalled. “I’ve had various people threaten me. I’ll never forget holding a palette knife full of yellow paint against a guy’s neck, yelling at him to get away from me. It was a palette knife that probably couldn’t cut him, but he didn’t know that.” 

He’s made more than 500 paintings depicting the Charlotte metro area, and in the process he’s become quite the researcher.  

“It seems to me that I might be the ultimate expert on what people love about the greater Charlotte area,” he said. “I speak to maybe 10,000 people a year face-to-face. They tell me what they love about the city and if enough people tell me they love it, I tend to paint it.” 

French lives by the old adage, “The medium creates the artist,” and estimates that 80-90% of his work is about recognizing what the public wants to see. The first piece of advice he has for young aspiring artists is to not think about themselves and their own wants but to think about what the public would want from them, he said. 

French already has an eye on what he thinks people want to see in 2025; his upcoming projects include Heist Brewery & Barrel Arts, NoDa 101, Billy Jack’s Shack, The Crunkleton, QC Pour House, Protagonist, The Gin Mill, and Midwood Country Club. 

Two former subjects are back in his scope; he’s planning on doing Lupie’s Café again after originally painting it in 2008, then returning to Bar-B-Q King, as well. He hopes to knock out a new painting of Tremont Music Hall, though he’ll have to rely fully on memory and photographic evidence. 

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One of French’s top goals for the future is to paint a race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, a project he’s still contemplating the complexities of. 

And of course, there are always more skyline views to paint. For his next one of those, he wants to capture a stretch of sky looking from the intersection of I-277 and Wilkinson Boulevard into Uptown while the city and stadium are lit for a game that’s in session during sunset or night. 

“That’s the number one skyline people ask for,” he said. 

Sometimes realizing what people want to see is just a matter of asking. 

You can find David French’s work at local establishments like Paper Skyscraper and Pura Vida Worldly Art, among other shops. Follow him on Facebook and Instagram or visit his website. You can also make an appointment to visit his studio. Reach him at Davidfrenchoriginals@gmail.com.