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David Byrd was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1926. His father, who suffered from mental illness, left the family when David was a young child. When David was twelve, his mother was forced by economic hardship to abandon him and his five siblings to foster homes. During the next four years, the children lived in three foster homes. A number of David’s paintings document this period of upheaval in his life. 

In 1958, David took a job as an orderly in the psychiatric ward at the Veterans Administration Medical Hospital in Montrose, New York. For the next 30 years, he worked with doctors and nurses in care of patients whose damage resulted from World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. This experience provided him with his defining body of paintings, which related to the patients and their individual behaviors, general routines and distinct personalities.