David Krueger

Chicago, IL

“I make paintings with my own two hands – these are my tools.”

David Krueger (he/him/his) approached everything in life with boundless enthusiasm and imagination. He drew heavily on pop culture and storytelling, and his work is saturated with symbols, vibrant colors, graphic shapes, and detailed patterns. His geometric style is known for horizontal bands drawn across the canvas that break the frame into narrative sections, much like a comic book layout. Between these lines he added elaborate decorative elements, including stars, zigzags, squares, crosses, X’s, and radiating lines.

As a member of Arts of Life before his passing in October of 2026, an organization that gives artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities a shared space to expand their practice and strengthen their leadership, David built an extensive exhibition record. He showed at Art Fair Asia Fukuoka with Sho +1 in Japan, Untitled Art Fair in Miami, and the Outsider Art Fair in NYC. His other exhibitions include In Good Company at the Chicago Cultural Center, and Dog Show and All Well and Good at Circle Contemporary. He had a long-running collaboration with artist Ben Marcus, making comics about the character Love Man. His practice was featured in Disparate Minds, and he can be heard on the Arts of Life Band’s 2017 album Kinda Weirdy. His bold, joyful work and his larger-than-life spirit live on through his art and the community that knew him.

As David once put it: “These are the magic fingers, I’ve got the Midas touch. I get ideas from watching TV or my imagination. My brain tells me everything and I’ll do a sketch. It could be any sketch I choose, then I draw it out on canvas. Everything fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. People like my art, they say ‘Ohhhh Krueger, you’ve got talent!’”