David Mann, a California graphic artist, celebrated biker culture and choppers in his paintings.

Manns images are associated with biker culture and regularly seen in biker clubhouses and garages, on motorcycle gas tanks, tattoos and on T-shirts.

Manns work was regularly featured in the motorcycle magazine Easyrider.

Choppers have been built based on the bikes first imagined in David Mann paintings.

Ed Roth loved the painting so much he purchased it and the rights to have it reprinted in Chopper magazine in a limited number in poster form.

David Mann was born on September 10, 1940 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA.

He began drawing and painting at an early age, doing pencil sketches of cars while in high school.

His father Paul Mann was a very large influence on him as he was an illustrator his whole life and a member of the prestigious Society of Scribes and Illuminators of London.

His sketching earned him his first job in 1957 with Doug Thompson and Ray Hetrick, pinstriping cars in their Kustom Kar shop in Kansas City.

With his first job in hand he began taking formal art classes with his father at the Kansas City Art Institute.

The classes didnt last long for either student as they both realized they had more ability and talent than their teacher.

With bags packed they drove across to the east coast of the USA in a customized candy apple red and pearl white Chevy coupe, the tunes of Jerry Lee Lewis belting out around them.

While enjoying his Rock and Roll fuelled trip he came across a custom car house, Bay Area Mufflers and discovered the world of chopped motorcycles.

Choppers as they were then termed were instantly appealing to him.

Their air of freedom, power and thundering sound combined with a romantic yet violent appearance had him entranced.

He was immediately hooked on these chrome and steel hand built motorcycles.

Inspired by his first custom chopper, he shifted his efforts from drawing cars to choppers.

It was also at this time he created his first of many chopper paintings; a watercolor titled Hollywood Run.

The painting screamed of wild freedom, a herd of hallucinogenic horses bolting out of the Hollywood hills.

It was the essence of chopper riders of the time gladiators, warriors and free men with blood in their eyes, looking for somewhere to taste it.

In 1963 he rode to the Kansas City custom Car show on his now fully customized Harley, the first chopped Harley in the state, with his very first painting firmly tucked under his arm.

His bike attracted a lot of attention, mainly from an enormous outlaw biker by the name of Tiny from Sioux City, Iowa.

Tiny loved Davids scooter and he also noticed his great bike painting.

Tiny became a very close friend of David and soon added him to the ranks of the club.

Also with Davids permission, he had taken a photograph of Davids first painting and sent it off to another friend, Ed Big Daddy Roth.

Big Daddy Roth was a pop artist and the then publisher of one of the worlds first motorcycle magazines, Choppers.

David Mann Art