David McDiarmid Studio

Find here a fun-filled, food-focussed studio in Glasgow’s East End, producing affordable, handmade artworks and gifts for fellow food lovers and cooking enthusiasts. From original oil paintings of your favourite ingredients to display in your kitchen, to ceramic pasta magnets for your fridge, to handcrafted coasters and placemats to set your table with, David McDiarmid Studio makes art for foodies.

As well as being an artist, David is a keen cook and food history nerd. The ideas behind his works are fed (sorry) from many different sources including books on the subject of food history covering individual ingredients, developments in cookery, food service, food trends and diets as well as chef biographies, recipes and cookbooks. He is also an avid watcher of basically any cooking show he can find on TV and keen listener of any food-focussed podcasts.

Throughout his career he has balanced his art practice with a series of day jobs including many years spent in hospitality roles most recently as an Assistant General Manager at a popular Mexican restaurant in Glasgow. He tired of this and enrolled in the MLitt Curatorial Practice Course taught between Glasgow School of Art and University of Glasgow in 2017 in an attempt to move away from hospitality and instead became even more interested in food as subject.

In 2018, he curated a one-night only pop-up restaurant night run entirely by a team of artists at the former Project Café site in Glasgow featuring both art and food on the menu. In 2019 he launched Artists’ Tuck Shop as a vehicle to support fellow food-loving artists recognising a trend for artists working with food as a subject. Around the same time, David began to explore food as a subject in his own work and launched David McDiarmid Studio to provide unique, handcrafted artworks and gifts for fellow food lovers.