DAAG: INTERVIEWS: DAVID GALLUP

I was born in St. Louis in 1967, the third of five brothers. When I was six years old we moved to Pleasanton, California. I grew up there and moved to Los Angeles to go to Otis/ Parsons School of Design. Our family dates back to the 1600's on my father's side, and nearly that long on my mother's side. My mother's family is German, and my father's family is a mix of Irish, German, and probably about a dozen other things.

No. Being from blue-collar, mid-western folk it never seemed like an option to my ancestors. But I have seen a lot of creative talent in my brothers, one of whom is a blues guitarist and the other a technical engineer. All of them are musical. I was never able to pick up music, so I paint. When the family gets together it is a great party with great music. I try never to miss those events. I have the ambition to one day learn guitar or banjo, but don't have the time just now.

I think there's very little difference between music and painting, really. Both are essentially mathematical disciplines which use harmonies to create beauty and emotion. Subject in a painting would equal lyrics in a song; color would equal chord structures; rhythm and tempo are like compositions being busy or simple, and the volume of a piece of music is like the scale of a painting. In the end, musicians are artists just as painters are. Only the medium is different.

I have always painted, as far back as I can remember. When I was about three or so, I remember my grandmother and my mother marveling over my coloring book. I was taking so much time on each picture because it had to be something I could be proud of or I wouldn't do it. From that day on my art was a source of personal validation for me, and I always worked hard at it.

I think I had always known I would be an artist; even as a kid it was simply what I did. At the age of eighteen my high school art teacher, Mel Friedman, showed me that it was possible to paint for a career and encouraged me to go to Otis/Parsons and study illustration. While at Otis, a class field trip to the L.A. County Museum of Art opened my eyes to Monet. It was the first time I had ever seen a Monet in person, and when I walked out of the show I was in the park there by the tar pits. The light was coming through the trees, creating dabs of light on the grass. It looked different to me; it looked like Monet's paintings. That was the day I became a painter.

I have a four year B.F.A. in Illustration from Otis/Parsons. After graduating, I was looking for work so I called this art school from the phone book called Mission Renaissance. I told them that I wanted to teach perspective, since it was what I had always learned easily and I often found myself teaching it to groups of confused students when I was in college. I had an interview at noon the next day with the school's founder, Larry Gluck, down in Culver City, CA. The interview ended at 3:00 a.m. at his home in Eagle Rock with his wife making us all breakfast. Larry had decided that I would someday manage his chain of schools and immediately began teaching me personally his techniques in oil and charcoal. I spent a couple of years starving and studying painting and teaching under Larry's supervision. In the end, his son-in-law took over the school, and I went on to a new job which actually paid a living wage. I will always be grateful for the knowledge Larry passed on to me and for his faith in me.

I consider my website to be my single most important marketing tool. I use it to promote my paintings, my gallery and museum events, and my workshops. I also like to use it to explain my approach to painting because I think that is an important part of who I am.

I know a few artists who are not computer literate, don't own computers, and feel like they're too old to get started. Other than that, my friends are all very positive about having a website. It really is the most cost-effective way to show your work to the most people.

I look at my website as just a way for people to view my work without driving all over the state to see them, and as a way to learn about my approach to the work. I use it to show my galleries what inventory is available to them and to show my collectors where they can buy a particular painting of mine. Also, through my site my collectors can look at all of my current paintings in all of my galleries and special venues all from their own home. And they can contact me or the gallery to purchase the work or to ask any questions.

Well, now you've touched on a subject that is very special to me. I have studied color extensively, and I am a big believer in using a broad palette. Having more choices helps you get the right color more accurately and more quickly, and with practice and intensive study one can learn to find harmonies without the limitations of a limited palette.

I have studied colors everywhere I have seen them -- paintings, nature, on my palette. I have developed a discerning eye for harmony, and gradually discovered a mathematical harmony which lies beneath beautiful color harmonies. I don't think I can really explain it enough to be helpful yet, but I can recognize it.

My modifications are subtle. They can involve making two colors which are nearly the same value -- actually the same value (if that makes sense). Or I like to make the step-apart in value between, say, three colors in a painting equal-steps, and then make the color shifts equal to those steps. And I like finding color harmonies by making certain key colors of equal intensity and opposite value. Then I use the color which is adjacent to the complement of a color to make greys or to create harmony. This stuff is really technical. Basically, here is a good chunk of what I've figured out works for me:

You can bring colors into harmony by making them rhyme in many other ways, such as: if the first color is ten degrees off of blue to the red side, is a six on a value scale of 1-10, and is a 3 on an intensity scale of 1-10, try to rhyme it with a color which is 10 degrees off of blue to the yellow side, is a four on a value scale of 1-10, and is a 3 on an intensity scale of 1-10. Or a variation would be just like that but with a 7 on the intensity scale, to mimic the 3 in an opposite way. Use whichever note will best describe the subject honestly. If you can construct a painting in which every note has a mathematical reason for it's existence, you are in the realm of poetry and greatness with your color. The ways of rhyming color are nearly infinite, but a rhyme is a precise thing. You can't be close and get the right effect. It just won't "sing". It's like playing guitar or piano; one finger in the slightly wrong spot doesn't make the chord. It creates discord.

When I'm working, I don't actually know if I'm thinking about these things consciously or not. I go somewhere else in my mind and it all comes together. I do know that if I hit a wrong note I see it right away, and then I have to find a way to fix it. That seems hard, I know, but the hardest part is that the real world doesn't look like that. You have to be in control as the artist and perform subtle manipulations of hue, value, and intensity. And you have to be able to do it without detracting from the natural look of the subject or your painting won't be honest. Too many plein air artists take their manipulations to an extreme to try to express something within themselves, I suppose. When a painting no longer looks like the subject, it looses that sense of reverence and honesty for me. I want to be made to believe what you show me.

These harmonies can become so complex that if you are not ABSOLUTELY comfortable with color and mixing you can get lost in a hurry. I think that's why so many instructors and even artists use fewer colors and simple rules. But when you start rhyming like that, you get Jazz. It's great! Sadly, almost all of these subtleties are lost in even the best reproduction. That's one reason why I only sell originals. And I only hang originals in my home.

While on location, I generally paint what I see. When I bring the paintings back to the studio, that's where my colors become a contrived balance of color harmonies. This is a conscious adjustment from what I see to what I want to see, and it is an important part of my work. I use the color notes from my plein-air work to inspire beautiful harmonies in the finished painting. By having fresh inspiration for color in each subject, I have new harmonies all the time.

Well, I consider myself an artist, not a "Landscape Artist." I do have a real bond with nature, a passion for wilderness. The natural world is my church, it's where I feel a connection with the divine. It seems natural for me to go out, away from the cities, and paint. You may notice that in my more recent works, birds are increasingly represented. To me, birds and other wildlife represent the living spirit of nature itself.

Still life rarely inspires me. I just don't have an easy time seeing God in it. Now, give me a thunderstorm at sunset, sweeping over the desert; a moonrise over the ocean in the rain. I am face to face with God, and humbled by the power of Nature. That's how I want people to feel when they look at my paintings.

I've used W/N for so long, I know there are a million paint brands out there and I wish I could try them all but I've found a brand I like and trust so I don't really shop around anymore. If I keep hearing artists whom I respect mention a brand name, I'll test it. But I don't want to hear it's cheaper, I want to hear it's better in quality. I don't hear that much.

As an illustrator, acrylic was the only medium anyone used. That's what I was taught at school, and what I used for my brief career in illustration. It wasn't until I met Larry Gluck that I began painting much in oil. It was love at first stroke.

I have used everything pretty extensively except pastel, and nothing looks like oil. Nothing else has the depth, integrity, or beauty of oil. I have heard people say that their use of acrylic is just as beautiful as oil. My opinion: You can use oil poorly and make it look like acrylic, but you can't make acrylic look like the best artists can make oil look. Apologies to Bob Kuhn, arguably the greatest wildlife artist of our time. He paints in acrylic and does a masterful job -- better than anyone else I've ever seen -- and still his originals lack the beauty of surface of the great oil paintings. I saw his show in Jackson a year ago and I was blown away by the guy's talent, but I kept wishing the work was done in oil.

I have done interviews with excellent acrylic painters. My feeling about their work is the same as what you express concerning Bob Kuhn's work. These painters tell me that they paint with acrylic because it dries faster and can deliver to galleries faster. There doesn't seem to be much concern about the aesthetics of the final luster. Another reason I've encountered is that some people are allergic to the fumes of oil paint. I wonder if your opinion about the medium would change if you had large orders to fulfill.

Well, I do have my galleries sometimes make intense demands on my time. Their game is different from mine. Hopefully, my galleries understand that what I do is not a product for an immediate market but rather a very personal observation, a record of my moment of communion with nature and with the divine. That can't be rushed, and changing my approach for the sake of supplying a gallery would devalue every painting I have ever done and be a slight to anyone who ever collected my work for it's historic significance and for my reputation as a genuine fine artist.

I taught art for thirteen years, and just recently took a sabbatical. I am dedicating the time instead to helping out a group that is very dear to my heart, the California Art Club. I was recently asked to be the 1st Vice President of the club, and I have accepted that position. I am looking forward to my new role in shaping the future of traditional art in California.

The California Art Club (CAC) was established in 1909 by the early California Impressionists or Plein Air Painters, and was developed from the Los Angeles Painter's Club, which was founded in 1906 as an informal group of male artists. A significant impetus that helped form the California Art Club was the objective to allow women artists to participate in group exhibitions and in fellowship. Instrumental in the founding of the CAC were the artists, Franz Bischoff (1864-1929), Carl Oscar Borg (1879-1947), Hanson Puthuff (1875-1972) and William Wendt (1865-1946), whose wife Julia Bracken Wendt (1871-1942) was a sculptor of high merit.

Under the leadership of William Wendt, who served as president for six years, the California Art Club quickly became a powerful and prestigious institution that was recognized as a cultural authority on the west coast. The Club's membership included such luminaries as Edgar Payne (1883-1947), Granville Redmond (1871-1935), Guy Rose (1867-1925), Jack Wilkinson Smith (1873-1949) and Marion Wachtel (1876-1954). With the success of the CAC's quality group exhibitions, the supporting "Patron" membership grew to include many of southern California's leading citizens. Among the Patron members was Aline Barnsdall who in 1926 gave her home, Hollyhock House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, to the California Art Club as their headquarters for a fifteen-year term. However, after the 1929 stock market crash, World War II, and the onset of international modernism, the Club's status and membership declined, and in 1942, the CAC had to give their prestigious headquarters to the City of Los Angeles. Astonishingly, the California Art Club did not completely perish over the years, but was able to continue as a small group of professional artists and amateur painters.

In 1993 artist Peter Adams was asked by Patron member Verna Gunther to help revive the California Art Club. Together with his wife, Elaine Adams, their vision to restore "traditional" art to a high standard became realized as they implemented their revival plan. With the help of fellow artists Dan Goozeé, Steve Huston, Stephen Mirich, Daniel W. Pinkham, Tim Solliday and William Stout, they recruited top artists from northern to southern California. Prestigious artists residing outside California were also invited to join as "Out-of-State Artist" members.

As California Art Club president Peter Adams states, "A major tenet of the California Art Club is to look to our heritage for inspiration and guidance brought through the knowledge of artistic techniques nearly forgotten. The intention of the California Art Club is to encourage the education and continuation of fine traditional art by inviting the public to witness the evolution of our artists' new timeless creations."

Great question. Do you have a few minutes? My friend, Rick Humphrey, told me on the phone one time about his preparation which he learned from Dan Pinkham. He said that Dan spends twenty minutes minimum before starting to paint, just letting his mind get quiet. Dan, being the religious person he is, often prays during this time. Rick said that when he started doing that his paintings got better and recommended I try it myself. The next night I went to paint the sunset at Point Dume in Malibu. I arrived forty minutes early and set up to paint. Then I sat and watched how the sun was lining up over the horizon, how the colors were changing. After twenty minutes I did a simple line sketch of my composition, anticipating the position of the sun just before sunset. Fifteen minutes after that, I began to paint. That painting was called "Sunset Glow", and was a tremendous leap forward for me. It was exhibited that year at the California Art Club's Gold Medal Exhibition. I use this technique now almost all the time.

A year later I was reading LA Magazine. The cover story was a man who claimed to have the first ever photographs of God. New technology had allowed him to record different areas of brain activity on film. Scientists had been using the technology to study which part of the brain lights up when the subject thinks of math, emotions, sex, etc. Eventually, they noticed that one part of the brain was not lighting up with any of their common tasks. After much research, they found that this part of the brain is only active when the subject is praying. He argued -- rather well -- that God is this part of our brain (an arguable hypothesis at best). What was of particular interest to me was that not any prayer would do. It had to last for at least twenty minutes and was preferably repetitive or meditative, such as a rosary or Buddhist chanting, etc. I think that using that part of the brain to produce a painting infuses the work with a spiritual connection, and spending twenty minutes making it active is well worth the time.

Really, I consider myself a Holy Man. If you think about it, a Holy Man is one who pursues a relationship with God rather than pursuing material goods. At least that's one possible definition. I have had lots of opportunities to make good money, but I follow my calling to bring to others the sense of reverence I feel when I am alone in Nature. I do this through my paintings which are created with the prayer part of my brain. This has not been an easy road, but I know it is the road I am here to follow. I just know. Nothing has ever felt so right to me as painting in Nature. It is the only time I feel that I know exactly what to do. When I'm not painting, I usually feel a little lost, a little inept. When I paint I feel certain, and I feel brilliant.

But they're very different things. Religion is an instruction through a human interpreter as to what God wants or who God is, or a manual on how to talk to God. A relationship with God can exist without anyone telling you that God even exists. I don't know anything about God, and I don't make many guesses. I don't think we are meant to know any more than we can feel and see. But I don't KNOW that. I just think it. I know that many people get a lot out of their support groups of others with common beliefs. I know that many people get closer to God through religious instruction. I respect that, actually, unless it is used to hurt or exclude others with different beliefs. Too often, it is exclusive or intolerant of other approaches. And like I said, I never felt that communion with the divine as strongly in a church as I do in nature.

So, you're saying that pursuing material goods and a relationship with God are two opposites and extreme incompatibles. But we do have a body and we do have to eat and earn a living. Isn't there a middle path, perhaps, where a person can have a healthy, spiritual relationship with God while earning a living?

I hope so, and I hope I'm on that path. Understand, everyone's path is different and that's why the world works. If I didn't have the rest of the world performing their jobs I could never go and paint. I'd be busy growing my own food and building a shelter. The concepts of pursuing material goods and the concept of pursuing a relationship with God may be opposite in many ways, but I don't think that they're incompatible.

Think of it like this: a tribe of indigenous Americans would have many hunters, many warriors, but only one shaman. The tribe could never have existed if everyone had a calling to be the shaman. That doesn't mean the warrior wasn't a spiritual person, he just had different abilities to contribute to the group. There was a way for him to be more useful by doing something else (protecting the tribe) and he did it. That was his path, and it was noble of him to pursue it as best he could. All I'm saying is that if the modern day warrior is a U.S. Marine, and a modern day Chief is a CEO or a Senator, this makes those who spend their lives helping others to experience a glimpse of God (as I hope I do) the modern day Shamans.

Not to be coy, but anywhere from twenty minutes to 200 hours. That's simply an honest answer. If you want an average, just consider that I paint at least ten hours per day, every day. I produce about 65 paintings per year, but some I don't finish. If you want the answer bad enough, you can do the math yourself. I've got painting to get to.

Some people understand, some don't. Those who get to know me well enough eventually come to understand that this obsession is part of me. Some relate to it, most don't. I don't think there is any easy way to make people understand passion unless it is within them. If they have it, they already understand it when they meet me.

It lasts up to ten hours and sometimes more. I try not to go longer than that without at least taking ten or twenty minutes for my eyes. I know I should break more often, but it never feels right to stop. I did mention I'm obsessive, right?

Really, I think the subject selects me most of the time. I just try to be open to it. Most recently, I have done some paintings of the phosphorescent effects of the red tide at night. For those who don't know about it, a red tide is an algae bloom in the ocean. These microscopic organisms become so prolific that they turn the water a rusty red color. At night, of course, the water looks normal, with one exception: The Algae give off a phosphorescent light when they are agitated, such as in breaking surf. My first night painting this I had just gone out to paint a sunset. The sunset was not dramatic enough to satisfy me, so I waited around to watch the crescent moon setting over the sea about an hour later. That's when I noticed the glow. I was up on a bluff, and saw the green light as the breaking waves peeled all the way up the coast. It was incredible. I hiked down to the beach to see what it looked like there, and I was amazed. I've lived in California for 29 years and had never seen such a site.

My first thought was that it was remarkably beautiful. My second thought was that it was unpaintable. I never would have set out to paint something so surreal as green light coming from churning white-water at night under a red crescent moon. After a fair amount of consideration, I began to paint. I actually started the painting at 12:45 a.m., and that's without having dinner! After all, I just went to paint the sunset and I would be returning shortly. So in the end, the subject chose me. This is not an uncommon experience for me.

I was so awe-struck with this experience that I returned several times to paint the red tide that week, and on those occasions I did paint exactly what I set out to paint, at least subject-wise. The actual compositions I discovered while scouting on location, and those provided me with plenty of surprises and new observations. Even in these paintings, the inspiration came to me while I was in Nature simply observing and experiencing, and the group of night paintings was produced due to an unexpected inspiration.

John Henry Twachtman, Claude Monet, Guy Rose, Alphonse Mucha, Willard Metcalf, and Hiroshi Yoshida for the dead artists. But how about the living ones, too? They never seem to get enough credit. I am influenced by certain living artists in California as much as by the dead guys. In particular, there is a group in Palos Verdes who always inspire me. Dan Pinkham, Steve Mirich, Richard Humphrey. They have soul and passion and talent to burn, and I am lucky to live in a time and place where I can rub elbows with them. For spiritual content and immaculate craftsmanship, I look at the pastel figurative paintings of Cathey Cadieux. And we all love Jeremy Lipking's technique and drawing ability, don't we? I take some of my greatest inspiration from Peter Adams -- his courage to paint honestly and his amazing sense of drama and design.

Don't get me wrong, I love the historic painters and could give you a very long list of my favorites, but I think that too little appreciation of the living legends is given. People need to understand that the work that is being done by some of the artists in California today is superior or equal to the work done by Granville Redmond and Edgar Payne a hundred years ago. I want everyone to know that they are appreciated while they're still here as well.

The difference between the "dead" painters and the living, I think, is in the fact that the "dead" have terminated the process and we have something to learn from them, whereas the living are still in the thick of the process, and still learning, themselves.

Your question seems to imply to me a very different, if not opposite, perspective on this. The dead artists, if they were great, were still learning until the day they died, so our lessons from their paintings are all "Works in Progress". What they can teach us is limited, it is only what we can glean from their paintings and writings. Living artists are to me a more valuable resource, because we can still ask them questions and get answers. We can discuss their approach with them and learn from their experience. What a great opportunity! It's like being able to go back and drill Monet or Sargent on their technique, philosophy, etc. Just because an artist is dead doesn't make him more knowledgeable or make his knowledge more complete. And just because an artist is alive and still learning doesn't preclude him from being a master.

Yes, but the "process" that Monet went through was related to the time, the culture in which he lived. In fact, artists true artists -- depict in their art the age in which they live, however subtle or forward that depiction may be. And this is inevitable because nobody is immune to the influence culture exerts, especially on artists. And if that age has passed on, what comes after it is a totally different process. So, Raphael lived in a certain age and Turner lived in a certain age. Raphael's process came to an end when that era ceased to be. Same with Turner and all of the dead artists. But the living artists are still in the process. We do have things to learn from living artists, of course, but more so from dead artists.

As an artist, even according to your own argument, part of my job is to record the current culture and time. If Raphael can only teach us about his time, and I have to concern myself with depicting my time, that only helps illustrate how it is very important to study current artists! In the end, I'd consider it all about equally important. I only emphasize the living artists because so many people emphasize the dead ones. If Monet were here painting today, would his lessons be less important because he is in our time? Quite the contrary, I think. I believe there is equal talent among us today, and I would love to see it get the same reverence Monet's talent has earned him posthumously.

A career as a painter is harder than you can imagine. Brace yourself for some hardships and long hours. Painting requires a lot of knowledge, training, skill, talent and experience. It might be one of the hardest careers in which to earn a living commensurate with the prerequisites. If I offered the readers a job in which they work insane hours, get no days off and no paid vacations, and they can't expect to see any return on the hours for the first 10 years (if ever), and if they do eventually make money it will be in sporadic influxes with no reliable income stream, how many would say that sounds like their career? That's painting.

It never even entered my mind. For me it was more like, paint full-time or be miserable! I never cared if warnings about painting being a tough career were accurate. I was painting and that was that. Also, being in your twenties the hardships are easier to bear. It was like, "Okay, so I'll be poor." I just accepted it.

Absolutely. I don't paint what I think people are going to buy, I paint what I think needs to be painted by me at this moment. Then I let my wife and my galleries find buyers. I don't paint for money, but I do sell my paintings for money. The painting I would do anyway.

There have been many times in the early years when I took on commercial work. I have been a studio assistant to Hiro Yamagata in his Malibu studio, I have been a cartoonist, an animator, and I have made greeting cards. Other than the studio assistant job for Hiro, I don't think I was very good at those jobs.

I got some good advice once from my R.A. in college. He had worked as an illustrator and was going back to school to study fine art. I told him that I wanted to be a fine artist but was studying illustration so I could make a living. He told me that I would succeed at what I loved. He was right. I now make more as a fine artist than I ever did as an illustrator, mainly because I wasn't a great illustrator. When I started teaching fine art I found my true calling.

I will continue to chase my muse. My most recent works have featured figures in landscape, and have been very well received. You may see more of these paintings with my 12 year old model, Andrea. I am posing her among nature and among birds to illustrate the importance of man's relationship with nature. You can expect more of these paintings for the next six months or so, at least.

David, I really enjoyed our interview, and I truly enjoyed looking at your most beauteous paintings on your website. You are one of my favorite artists. Keep up the good work and I'll most certainly come to see you when I'm in southern California.