David Welker 'The Dragons Lair' Print Release Details

Artist: David Welker
Title: The Dragon's Lair
Medium: Screen Print
Size: 14 x 20 Inches
Edition: 100
Price: $100

 

*available at 1pm EST on Thursday November 13th, 2025

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David Welker is an American painter, muralist and printmaker born in 1964 in Poughkeepsie, New York. He studied painting and illustration at Syracuse University and has built a career blending fine-art technique with rock-and-roll energy. His elaborate gig posters for bands such as Phish, Pearl Jam, The Black Keys and Primus have become collector items, while his 1993 cover for Phish’s album Rift was listed among the ten best album covers of all time by Relix magazine.

Welker’s visual language fuses Depression-era surrealism, underground comix, Westcoast surf culture and early 20th century Ashcan School realism. Working almost entirely by hand, he layers ink, graphite and acrylic to create dense narratives packed with symbolic figures, distorted architecture and his own ornate lettering that marries 19th century sign typography with modern graffiti flair. Each piece begins as loose thumbnail sketches; colour separations are drawn manually rather than computer-generated, ensuring every print bears the subtle irregularities of craft.

Beyond concert art, Welker has spent decades on private mural commissions, once specializing in Chinoiserie wall paintings for luxury residences, an experience he credits with sharpening his technical range while teaching him that legacy matters more than lavish settings. Now focused on gallery work, he continues to explore subconscious storytelling, producing large canvases where urban realism dissolves into dreamlike fantasy and where beauty is, in his words, “beautiful when it’s based in honest emotion and conveyed with appropriate discipline.” Whether painting a rooftop mural in New York or pulling a limited screen print, Welker invites viewers to lose themselves in intricate worlds that pulse with music, memory and the restless spirit of American popular culture.