Artist : David Kim Whittaker
Title : Prisoners of Time
Medium : oil and acrylic on canvas
Dimensions : 180 x 140 cm


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Most of David Kim Whittaker’s paintings are based upon a metaphysical interpretation of the human head. These portrait-portals are often ambiguous in gender and identity, aiming to represent the totality of the human condition - the universal where the cruel and the empathetic are held in tension with personal experience. The works juggle dual states of inner and outer calm and conflict, offering glimpses of simultaneous strength and fragility, conscious and subconscious, masculine and feminine. They embody Whittaker’s ongoing effort to express something far greater than the individual self. In this particular painting, that metaphysical interior is densely populated with layered symbolism—mountains, flowers, vessels, and embedded animals. The creatures featured were all inhabitants of Kyiv Zoo at the onset of war in Ukraine, their presence a quiet, haunting witness to the ongoing human destruction. These creatures - some partially obscured, some emerging from the tangle of memory and architecture - become emblems of loss, innocence and endurance, evoking both a spiritual kinship and the silent toll of conflict. The head becomes a sanctuary, or perhaps a site of reckoning, where personal reverie and geopolitical trauma converge. This painting, like much of Whittaker’s recent work, reflects a deepening sensitivity and unease in response to escalating global tensions. It is a dual mirror—one side hope, the other warning—staring back from the frame with quiet insistence.

Whittaker is a British artist born in Cornwall, where they continue to live and work. Exhibitions have been held internationally, including a major solo exhibition at Fondazione Mudima in Milan in 2017. Their work is represented in numerous museum and private collections worldwide. In 2011, Whittaker was awarded the Towry Prize (First Prize) at the National Open Art Competition.