David Cobley was born in Northampton, England in 1954. He completed a year’s foundation course in art and design there, but dropped out of a diploma course at Liverpool to travel around Europe and the Far East.

After completing a degree in comparative culture in Japan, David Cobley began to paint and draw again and returned to England in 1985 where he worked as a freelance illustrator and visualiser and painting in his spare time. 

David Cobley was short-listed for the BP Portrait Award in 1989 (then sponsored by the John Player group) and gradually portrait commissions took the place of illustration work. His commissioned portrait subjects include The Princess Royal, Stephen Beroff, Richard Briers and Sir Timothy Sainsbury.   Alongside his work as a portrait painter, he began developing his interest in the human figure, and has had solo exhibitions of work in Bath and with Messun’s in London.

Cobley is a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, The Royal West of England Academy and the New English Art Club.