David Griffin | Listening to the Landscape

David Griffin reveals the sensory layers of the American West

By Elizabeth L. Delaney

There wasn’t one specific moment when David Griffin decided to become an artist. The desire to paint mountains blanketed in thick clouds or sun-drenched snow dissipating on rocky terrain was something that materialized over time. He may not have been ready to see it, hear it, or feel it when he started his life’s journey, but it was there, waiting, in the legacy of his ancestors, in the majesty of the land, in his memories of doodling as a kid. Art took Griffin by surprise.

Growing up in Lubbock, TX, young David never met an artist, or visited an exhibition, or gave much thought to art at all. By the time he arrived at Texas Tech University, he was intent on playing baseball and studying to become a doctor. Two years of pre-med rigor quelled that desire, though, and as he scrambled to find an alternative path and retain his status as a full-time student while the Vietnam draft was bearing down, he remembered that he kind of liked to draw. He enrolled in a life-drawing class and, to his astonishment, discovered he had some talent. Plus, he enjoyed it. He belonged. After time spent searching without much success for where he fit in the world—not in medicine, not in professional sports, not in cowboy culture—he had found his niche at last.

After graduating from Texas Tech with a degree in fine art, Griffin was invited to participate in the first Illustrators Workshop in New York City, where he spent two years studying with revered illustrators Mark English, Bernie Fuchs, Bob Peak, Robert Heindel, and Fred Otnes. During his time there, he learned to paint. “That’s where I learned the theory, the culture, the manner of painting,” he says. “I was really a pencil guy up to that time.”

Griffin and his wife moved to Dallas in 1976, and he set up shop as an illustrator. He would remain in that field for a decade. While establishing himself in the commercial arena, Griffin also began to paint in earnest, sharing a studio with celebrated illustrator Bart Forbes and several others over the course of 12 years. It was then that Griffin really started to put his own ideas and techniques onto canvas. “That’s where my initial foray into [fine] art as a career started,” he says.

He eventually took up painting full time, and today he enjoys a spot in the pantheon of award-winning painters of the American West. He splits his time between Texas and Colorado, canvassing his surroundings for simple, engaging scenes to interpret in vivid color and dramatic light infused with his own sensory experiences. He explores the outdoors with his camera, pencils, or plein-air rig in search of subjects both spectacular and mundane, with the knowledge that beauty may be found anywhere—in the full moon bursting through the clouds or in the scraggly prairie bushes hugging the dry ground.

“Fresh takes on familiar things are really where I gravitate,” Griffin says of his process for selecting subjects. “What some people might call a mess, I find some beauty in.” He developed this process as a result of his fascination with the iconic American art family, the Wyeths. Griffin first encountered the works of N.C. Wyeth in the collection of the Museum of Texas Tech University, and he later went on to study Andrew Wyeth’s works and read his words extensively. Griffin was particularly inspired by the manner in which Andrew chose subject matter. Instead of looking for a unique subject to paint, he clung to the familiar landscapes, buildings, and figures that surrounded him. His quest was to reveal something new within those known quantities, to bring freshness to an otherwise standard depiction.

When he began painting landscapes, Griffin applied this outlook to his own work. He thought about the inherent geographic qualities of the most familiar place he knew—his childhood home of Lubbock—and how he might find innovative beauty in those qualities. From that point on, whenever he’d visit, he would tune in to the landscape in new ways. He noticed the trademark aspects of his surroundings—the soaring sky, the open prairie, the rugged brush. He had spent his whole life absorbing them, and they had remained inside him, waiting for him to rediscover them. “There’s something that’s talking to me here,” he thought. “There’s a spiritual part of this landscape that’s familiar to me.”

Such a sentiment manifests itself in compositional elements like sunlight on fallen snow. Instead of capturing only what exists on the surface, Griffin stops to feel and listen and integrate his sensory experience while taking in the scene. In his finished pieces, he strives to preserve that moment in which he’s one with the landscape, to communicate how he felt while immersed in the scene and the sensorial dialogue that transpired.

Recently, Griffin was named the featured artist for this year’s Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale, held in Denver in January. This marks the 13th year he has participated in the prestigious juried exhibition, which has served as both physical venue and creative home for the painter. “It has been the highlight of my art life,” says Griffin of his experience with the show, fellow participating artists, and culture that has inspired him to dive deep into his own creativity and mine its potential.

Griffin had first gained notice as a painter of iconic scenes of cowboys and horses in the western landscape. Growing up in Texas, the grandson of a bona fide cowboy, it was natural for such scenes to serve as the foundation of his artistic expression. “My heritage was in that cowboy-horse-ranching space,” he says. “That’s what I knew.” But more was on the horizon. Again to his surprise, Griffin discovered his painting practice was ready to evolve; his relationship with the western landscape was born out of a deeper consciousness than he had yet tapped into. Not unlike his decision to take that fateful life-drawing class in college, the epiphany came from an unexpected place.

In 2014, clarinetist Audrey Miller contacted Griffin for permission to feature one of his paintings, WEATHERED MOON, in her dissertation. As part of her final project, Miller had commissioned four pieces for clarinet, including one by composer Dan Caputo. Caputo had developed an interest in Southwestern art, and Griffin’s work in particular. He composed the second movement of his piece Southwest Landscapes in response to Griffin’s tranquil nocturnal landscape.

“I aimed to capture the immediate feeling I experienced when first seeing the painting,” Caputo says. “With WEATHERED MOON, I was absorbed into a quiet, deep landscape outside of time, a contemplative place. I did not find it necessary to represent elements of the painting through music. Rather, I sought to build a sonic space that conveyed those feelings I experienced when transported by David’s art into that vast, contemplative space he so carefully crafted.”

Griffin received a recording of the finished composition, and he was so moved by it that he began to reconsider his own body of work. “I started thinking, there’s more than a visual element going on in these paintings,” he says. That simple yet powerful revelation stuck with him, prompting him to do more than simply look at his subject matter. He began to listen to the landscape, to synthesize his emotions and observations when venturing into the field. Using more than just sight enriched his experience, allowing him to experience his subjects more completely.

At that point, Griffin decided to remove his signature cowboys, horses, and cattle from the compositions, instead focusing solely on the setting they inhabited. “I found that I had a greater affinity for the landscape—for the dirt—than I did for the heroes,” he says. He was taking a chance, creatively and professionally, unsure whether canvases without figures would speak to his collectors or fulfill him creatively. But the drive to explore outweighed his doubts, and the risk paid off. His new paintings sold, and he unlocked new levels of understanding within himself as an artist.

Along the way, Griffin was encouraged by Coors curator Rose Fredrick and the Coors community, and he credits that sense of trust with giving him the confidence to explore new ideas. “That show has been a highlight, because that’s where most of my growth has come from as an artist,” Griffin says. “What I found out was, through all those failures that I had in the studio, that I was able to at least find a voice that was really clear to me that this is what I should be doing—the landscape. I feel like I’ve been given a gift.”

representation
InSight Gallery, Fredericksburg, TX; The Legacy Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, and Scottsdale AZ; American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena, CA; www.davidgriffinstudio.com.

This story appeared in the December 2021/January 2022 issue of Southwest Art magazine.