Each month, AFC recognizes an artist for their strong commitment to conservation through art. This month, AFC salutes David Gallup.
David Gallup and his artist wife, Nansi Bielanski Gallup, have spent the past thirteen years traveling the world to study the tropical coral reefs that inspire their work. What began as an artistic fascination with one of the planet’s most complex and beautiful ecosystems gradually became something larger: an effort to use their artwork to inspire reef conservation, and ultimately to make a direct, personal contribution to protecting the ecosystems that had become the focus of their lives and work.
That progression led David and Nansi to the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, where in 2022 they purchased Molono Island, a five-acre island surrounded by forty acres of pristine coral reef. Molono has become the tangible conservation counterpart to their artwork. Together with their local staff and community, the Gallups serve as caretakers and protectors of the reef, working to prevent fishing and other damaging practices within the reef sanctuary and encouraging responsible ocean stewardship. Their efforts also include teaching sailing skills to local residents, promoting wind power as a practical alternative to dependence on fossil-fuel-powered boats.
The paintings serve another part of that mission: bringing the experience of the world’s tropical reefs to people who may never see them firsthand, and using art to build an emotional connection with environments increasingly in need of protection.
David has devoted his life to the study, teaching, and creation of art. He graduated from Otis/Parsons in Los Angeles in 1990 and soon found himself supervising a staff of more than thirty artists under pop art legend Hiro Yamagata on the Earthly Paradise collection and other projects. He began painting en plein air in the mornings, evenings, and on weekends, eventually leaving his friend and patron Yamagata to pursue his own career as a gallery artist.
For more than a decade, David served as Vice President of the historic California Art Club. His ability to critique a wide range of painting styles contributed to the club’s growing prominence in the 21st century. His work has been featured in solo museum exhibitions at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art in Malibu and the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, as well as numerous solo gallery exhibitions.
In 2016, David and Nansi left the California Art Club to concentrate on developing a new kind of painting based upon their experiences underwater. Their work combines conceptually intriguing aspects of Cubism with Abstraction, Pop, Impressionism, and Realism to convey the motion, complexity, disorientation, brilliant color, and extraordinary density of life found on tropical coral reefs. Many of their large canvases are collaborations, with both artists working in turns—or simultaneously—on the same painting.
In 2024–2025, this body of work was presented in a six-month solo exhibition at the California Nature Art Museum in Solvang, California. More than fifty original paintings depicting coral reefs and ocean life filled the museum’s main gallery. A hardcover catalog of the work was also produced, extending the conservation message of the exhibition beyond the museum walls.
For the catalog, Hiro Yamagata wrote:
“Nansi and David have produced, and reproduced in this book, a body of work deserving of a distinguished place in art history. On the surface their paintings make you feel you are in the tropics, inducted into complicated parades of life and color. There, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, we find organisms at their most active. Look deeper and you see that these painting ideas convert the challenges facing our oceans into glorious and joyful celebrations of what we have, and what is at stake. By focusing their profound talents on Tropical Coral Reefs, they shine a light on a world many will never see in person. Their paintings are magnificent essential images of our Blue Planet.”
David and Nansi continue to paint and teach from their studio in Santa Rosa Valley, California, while their work on Molono Island gives the conservation message behind the paintings a physical home: a living coral reef they can personally protect, study, share, and preserve.
