Desert Flowers, California Impressionist David Chapple

DAVID THAYER CHAPPLE AMERICAN, (1947 – ).Born in 1947 in Palo Alto, California, David Chapple was All American in football at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Chapple developed artistic talents at a young age, winning art contests and awards from grammar school. While earning his degree at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Chapple worked in the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History as a bird taxidermist, which developed his interest in wildlife painting. He started his professional career as an artist in 1970 while playing professional football in Los Angeles and turned his attention full-time to these artistic pursuits after retiring from football in 1975.Primarily a contemporary oil painter in the influence of the early California impressionist landscape painters, Chapple has won numerous stamp contests for conservation groups and various state stamps for California, Kentucky, Utah and Idaho. His lifelong passion for golf has translated into painting commissions for Jack Nicklaus, ABC Sports, Fred Couples, U.S. Open (golf), U.S. Senior Open, tour events, and various country clubs and golf courses around the country.Further extending his artistic talents into sculpture in the 1980s, Chapple was commissioned by many corporations including the Chiron Corporation, DuPont Nature Center, and Ameriflex, among others, as well a life-size bronze of Florence Griffith Joyner at the Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills, California.Chapple has been extremely active with Ducks Unlimited for several years and donates work annually for fundraising purposes. A three-time finalist in the California duck stamp contest, Chapple has accepted invitations to exhibit at the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Woodson Bird Art Show in Wausau, Wisconsin and at the Easton Waterfowl Festival in Maryland. He is recognized internationally as a fine, established wildlife artist, and his work is in continuing demand by private collectors, sportsmen, galleries and corporations alike.