David Daoud, a Franco-Lebanese painter and draughtsman, was born in Lebanon in 1970. In 1978, he left Beirut as a child, carrying with him not only the memory of a country torn by conflict, but also the quiet beginnings of an artistic voice shaped by distance. Though decades have passed, exile continues to ripple through his work like a half-remembered melody. His canvases speak not only of departure, but of presence found in absence, of stories scattered and yet softly stitched together. Each painting becomes a mirror in which anyone might catch a glimpse of their own wandering.

Upon settling in France, Daoud pursued formal training in the arts. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris and later at the National School of Decorative Arts, where he trained under the sculptor Charles Auffret, who had once learned from the disciples of Auguste Rodin. Daoud began with sculpture, drawn to its gravity and weight, its way of anchoring emotion in form. Yet it was a course at the Beaux-Arts that nudged him toward the fluid and luminous world of oil painting. There, he discovered a different kind of truth. Through brush and pigment, he could give a soul to objects, allowing images to emerge not fully formed, but as if remembered.

His paintings often explore the themes of migration, nostalgia, and the silence left by absence. Yet these are not works of torment. Instead, they evoke a gentle lyricism, like dreamscapes suspended in time. Forms dissolve at the edges, outlines blur, and colours fade into one another, leaving the viewer with only traces the ghost of a figure, the echo of a place. His compositions do not shout; they whisper. They leave space for the viewer to listen, to wonder, to complete what is left unsaid.

Daoud’s works have been exhibited in galleries, museums, and cultural venues across France and Lebanon. In 2018, one of his paintings was chosen by the musician Ibrahim Maalouf to grace the cover of the album "Levantine Symphony" a quiet dialogue between image and sound. In 2020, Daoud was awarded the Hermitage Foundation Prize, a recognition of both his skill and his singular vision. That same year, the Arab World Institute in Paris acquired several of his works, securing their place in a broader cultural narrative that crosses geography and memory alike.

Now living and working between Paris, Liège, and Beirut, David Daoud continues to move between worlds, both real and imagined. In each of these places, he gathers fragments of light and silence, stitching them into a language that needs no translation. His studio is not just a space for painting, but a threshold a place where borders vanish and the invisible becomes visible. And so he paints, not to capture life as it is, but as it feels, as it lingers, and as it slips quietly into the timeless. Like the last line of a book that does not quite end, his work leaves us with the gentle sense that something more is still unfolding.