In February of 2005, David Gallup took his first trip to the Channel Islands National Park and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. He was so inspired by the experience that he wanted to share it with others who had not visited the park and surrounding waters. “Right on the spot, I decided to make the Channel Islands National Park and Marine Sanctuary the focus of my work for the year,” said the painter from Thousand Oaks, California. “The idea quickly grew, and through the support and encouragement of my peers and new friends at EISF and the National Park Service I began to define a vision of a museum experience which would inspire the audience to visit and protect these islands.”

Working in the style of the impressionist masters, David’s works are created on location, or “en plein air” in California’s most scenic places of natural beauty. For the past ten years he has dedicated his life to painting en plein air throughout the American West in such places as Yellowstone, Malibu, and now, the Channel Islands off the coast of southern California.

Throughout his life David has been an avid conservationist. His passion for painting and his concern for the environment also led him to seek out other artists with the same philosophy. His strong conviction that art can heal the environment further led him to found two groups: Conejo Valley Painter’s Association, a regional group of plein-air painters dedicated to using their paintings to show California’s natural beauty and help conserve California’s wilderness for future generations and LUNA (Landscape United Nature Artists), a non-profit group of eight nationally recognized southern California artists dedicated to using their paintings to record and preserve some of the world’s most scenic and unspoiled ecosystems through museum exhibitions and education.

He also serves on the International Advisory Committee of the Natural World Museum in San Francisco, CA. Through David’s affiliation with the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, he came to know Ann Huston, Chief of Cultural Resource Management for the Channel Islands National Park. Ann helped David gain access to the NPS boats as they travel to the islands, and this travel time allowed him to get to know many of the scientists who work there researching marine life, indigenous plants and animals, and birds.

“As my knowledge of the islands and oceans deepened so did my commitment to use my art to protect them. With each visit to the islands, my appreciation for this unique park grew. The scenes of wildlife and coastal landscape seemed to by crying out for me to paint them, and each island took on its own sense of character like siblings in a large family,” said David.

David’s objective in this project is to capture the spiritual and emotional experience of visiting the Channel Islands: from the boat trip out with dolphins and whales, to hikes and kayak trips around the island perimeters in different weather and light, interior island hikes, wildlife, history and even diving and submarine experiences. “For a visual artist, the Channel Islands,” said David, “are a vast and virtually untapped source of inspiration and subject matter, and I will be spending two years working on my scenes of the island's unique geological, ecological and historical treasures”.

Along with the collection of 45-60 Channel Islands paintings, descriptive text by naturalists and others, will also be included, in the anticipated museum experience. These writings will give insight to the particular points of interest captured in the paintings, whether ecological, historical, or geological. The text will be displayed along with the paintings in a number of museums throughout the state of California and possibly beyond with the intention of gaining support for the restoration and preservation of this national treasure.

The resulting collection of text and images will be included in a book and catalog of the work, as well. In addition, The Essential Image Source Foundation will produce a documentary in High Definition about David and the production of these paintings along with a stunning, immersive HD video catalog of David’s work. Joint trips to the islands, over the next several months, are planned and an unprecedented collaboration of art with David’s painting and EISF’s high definition footage of the Channel Islands will transpire.

High definition programming and plasma displays have become increasingly in demand by art collectors and patrons, along with HD being the preferred format for art museum theatre venues and cataloging their collections. As such, the fortuitous meeting of David and Susan Sember, EISF President and Founder, at one of Susan’s presentation and screenings, led to a mutual vision and supportive partnership to “make a difference” with their art in the preservation and conservation of the Channel Islands.

Selected art museums will also be granted the opportunity to show special screenings of the EISF’s Channel Islands high definition footage, to accompany David’s Channel Islands Experience exhibition, on museum plasmas and theatre screens.

For more information about David Gallup, please visit www.dgallup.com and continue to check our web site for updates about this very exciting venture.