Scrapbook
Welcome to the "David C. Gallup online scrapbook." Here you will find photos of David painting with comments or stories from the artist. You will also find photos of David from various exhibitions and art events.
California Art Club's 99th Annual Gold Medal Exhibition
My favorite annual exhibition, held for the past six years at the wonderful Pasadena Museum of California Art. This year's exhibit featured master works by such legendary artists as John Asaro, Peter Adams, Dan Pinkham, David Leffel, Calvin Liang, Adrian Gotleib, Kevin McPhereson, Dan Thompson, William Stout, and the list goes on. One hundred forty of the nation's top artists were juried into the show by a panel of prominent artists and museum curators. When they arrived, they were given a chance to carefully survey the show and vote on one painting to take the coveted Gold Medal Award for Painting. I am beyond proud to announce that the award was given to my painting, "Twice Humbled". Without question, it is one of the highest honors any artist can have bestowed upon him- signifying the respect of his most accomplished peers.
Pictured Above: David Gallup, Peter Adams, and Susan Sanders pose in front of the winning painting. John and Susan Sanders are the new owners of "Twice Humbled", and have generously agreed to allow the painting to travel with the Channel Islands National Museum Tour starting in 2010.
Photo courtesy of Walt Mancini, Copyright 2010.
Plein-Air Alaska, June 2010
"Barefoot on the Tundra" Workshop/Adventure
In late May and early June of 2010, I took an adventurous group of students to paint in "real" Alaska. The adventures that ensued found us wandering into the gory midst of a recent wolf kill on a snowy meadow (probably a young moose or caribou), painting barefoot on tundra on a warm day at snow level, and running from an approaching lightning storm on the south edge of Denali National Park. We also had close encounters with a Bald Eagle, a newborn Moose and it's mother, and a river which was carving it's way deep inside the very glacier we were standing on while we painted.  Amidst this astounding and still-wild landscape, we spent eight days and no nights (it never did get dark) working throughout the long lit days on deepening our understanding of art and nature. Pictured Above: "The After-Hours Gang," Taffina, Kay, and Jeanne. I took this photo at about 9:30 p.m. long after class was over. We were just setting up to start yet another painting.
I had a wonderful group of students, and I hope every one of them will be able to join me again to paint next spring.
One of my students took this pic during the first demo of the workshop, atop Mat-Su Glacier where we spent a warm day on a giant block of ice getting refrigerated. Maybe just a little too much...
A detail shot of my palette during the Mat-Su Glacier demo.
Channel Islands
Since the beginning of 2005, David has been working on a series of paintings for an upcoming solo museum exhibition. The series is a comprehensive look at the Channel Islands National Park and Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Ventura County in California. The picture above shows David working from a small inflatable boat in the world's largest sea cave, Painted Cave on Santa Cruz Island. A documentary film is being made about David's work on the islands, and should be done in time to accompany the exhibition in museums around the country and beyond. Photo courtesy of "Cap'n Dan", of Sail Channel Islands. David is proud to count Sail Channel Islands among his major sponsors for this collection.
The nature of this collection, being destined for collectors and museums alike, demanded some large-scale paintings.
David explains, "My studio is adequate for standard and medium sized works, but is uncomfortably small for large paintings. For the truly grand works such as this painting of orcas off Anacapa's East Coastal Cliffs I've had to move out to my driveway to work in natural light with enough room to get back and see the work at a proper distance. It's been hot out there lately, but I'm enjoying meeting all the neighborhood kids, who often follow me on their bikes as I go up to the painting, make my marks, and then walk out to the street to see it again from it's proper distance. I'm enjoying teaching them about art, and about the islands and marine life to be found just off the coast. I've also been asked to come and talk to their school classes, which sounds like fun to me."
There is also a film being produced about David's work on the islands. In 2008, director Susan Sember of the Essential Image Source Foundation (www.eisf.org) brought a camera crew to Morseburg Galleries (www.morseburggalleries.com) to get footage of the collection as it stood at the time, and to capture on HD film David's comments and thoughts about each painting and the body of work in general.
Legendary cinematographer David Stump was behind the camera for what will be a one-hour documentary film exploring Gallup's life, process, art, and connection to the islands. The film will be marketed to all relevant HD TV markets for international release.
Before there was the island project, there were other projects aimed at a museum destination. The first was LUNA, a group of top artists who are still entertaining the possibility of getting a show together of Yellowstone paintings:
The highlight of 2002 was definitely the Yellowstone trip. David was joined by fellow LUNA members Cathey Cadieux and Karl Dempwolf for painting this amazing ecosystem. Keep watching the "News & Reviews" section of this site for updates on a travelling museum exhibition. A second trip took place in Spring of 2003 with Robin Hall and Karl Dempwolf. This is a photo of David and Cathey working to quickly capture the spectacular effects of sunset and steam at Firehole Lake in Yellowstone, taken in September of 2002.
Here we have another photo from the Yellowstone trip. This one is of David painting "Late Afternoon at Firehole Lake", it was taken on the same evening. You can see the painting on the All Works page of this site. Says Gallup,"The rising steam, setting sun, and spectacular sky made this scene irresistable. I knew as I was painting that if I couldn't make a good painting out of this subject I may as well find another occupation. Fortunately for me, I was very satisfied with the result. I still long to return to paint Yellowstone again."
Here, Gallup is seen at the Greenhouse Gallery of Fine Art in San Antonio, TX, where he received three awards including the coveted "People's Choice Award" for his painting "California Daydream" in June 2004.
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