I started to contemplate the larger meaning of sunsets and how they give that moment to stop, reflect and often redirect our lives. I realized that this time of reflection was not just on a personal level but on a global level. No matter where you live sunsets surround you. Everywhere you look they are dramatic and overwhelming. When a person takes time to experience one, they are always swept away with the beauty they perceive. For that moment their problems and concerns become insignificant. They become one with nature; the world, the universe. The sky itself speaks to them and everything melts away.
I wanted to capture the mystical quality of the light at sunset which I think symbolizes so many emotions. I desired to preserve that special moment of exhilaration as a celebration of life. I hoped the magic of that glimmering light would transcend into the darker moments of our everyday lives. When I looked at a sunset, I wanted to tell the world, " There is beauty all around us. Look at the sunset and embrace a new way of seeing things. Find a new way of living in balance and harmony with all that surrounds you."
As I started painting sunsets, I realized that they possess a complexity that is infinite. The sky is nature's canvas. Nowhere can you find such a beautiful array of colors, contrasts, and harmonies. I began to paint sunsets more and more, experimenting with different palettes, sizes and formats. I looked for changes in the colors and cloud formations, first day to day , then season to season. In doing so, I realized that every sunset is unique and expresses different emotions just as it reflects different light and color patterns.
By December 1998 I began to think about how sunsets were a natural analogy for the close of the century. I wanted to express them as a chronological series depicting the waning of the twentieth century. I wondered what it would be like to take that one fleeting moment and capture it on canvas, one each week to document a year, or "52 Sunsets".
On January 1, 1999 I started my "52 Sunsets" series of oil paintings. These paintings are all done en plein air at sunset. The format is a consistent 11"x14" horizontal presentation. They are immediate and primal responses to the light show which surrounds us every evening.
This series of paintings not only depicts the impression of sunsets but expresses my own personal journal of the last year of the twentieth century. In trying to chronicle a year of sunsets, I found that I had accidentally captured a year of my own emotions and experiences. I have learned so very much in my own moments of reflection at sunset. In preparing for this show, I have come to intimately understand that sunsets not only express the light that composes them but reflect the human spirit in it's grandeur as well as it's subtlety. There is so much variety in life and the light that surrounds it.
David Gallup