Artist Bio

David Popa is a New York City–born land artist based in Finland, known for creating monumental, site-specific portraits directly in nature using only chalk, charcoal, and water. He calls these works “earth frescoes”—images formed on ice sheets, shorelines, sandbanks, and rock, then captured by drone before weather, tide, and thaw reclaim them. 

Popa’s practice sits at the intersection of classical portraiture and land art: technically precise, emotionally intimate, and designed to disappear. Rather than treating impermanence as a limitation, he frames it as the point—an invitation to witness how beauty changes when you can’t hold it. This ethos has taken him to extraordinary landscapes and historically significant sites, including work created in AlUla, Saudi Arabia near Hegra—recognized as the country’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site—and to the grounds of Whitby Abbey in England, where he created a massive land installation spanning thousands of square meters. 

Alongside his independent projects, Popa has collaborated with global cultural partners and brands on large-scale, location-driven work. This includes a campaign collaboration with Lexus for the GX “A New Perspective” series, as well as the creation of monumental prehistoric murals for Apple TV+’s Prehistoric Planet—painted on natural landscapes tied to the animals’ former habitats. 

In recent years, Popa’s work has expanded beyond the ephemeral moment into exquisitely finished collector objects—sculptural editions that translate the landscape’s fracture, texture, and atmosphere into permanent, artifact-like pieces collected internationally. His most recent personal projects include HELD—an exploration of love, shelter, and fragility made on a remote Norwegian archipelago—where the central work Haven saw overwhelming demand and completely sold out during the 5 day launch.

Whether created on the edge of a rising tide, across wind-scoured ice, or in the shadow of ancient ruins, Popa’s work asks a simple question: what changes when you accept that nothing lasts—and choose to make something beautiful anyway?