Artist Biography

Born in 1947 in Palo Alto, California, David Chapple found his artistic talents at a young age.  Winning art contests beginning in grammar school, Chapple won the local Langtham Foundation Award.  He attended Arcadia High School and went on to the University of California at Santa Barbara earning a Bachelor of Science in Anthropology. While in school in Santa Barbara, Chapple worked as a taxidermist, giving him a special understanding for his developing interest in wildlife painting.

Chapple was All American in football at UCSB and played professionally in the National Football League 1969-1975 as a kicker, winning All-Pro while with the Los Angeles Rams in 1972.  Beginning in 1970, Chapple started his professional career as an artist while still playing football with the Los Angeles Rams.  His retirement from football in 1975 enabled him to turn his attention full-time to his artistic pursuits.His love of nature and taxidermy experience has been artistically rendered in his paintings of a wide variety of birds featured in their outdoor habitats, which he began selling professionally in 1970.  His artistic endeavors expanded to the printing medium of etching, creating over 200 sold-out editions in the 1980s.

Chapple has won numerous stamp contests for conservation groups including Ducks Unlimited, Quail Unlimited, Trout Unlimited and various state stamps for California, Kentucky, Utah and Idaho.  He earned the Golden Teal award by Ducks Unlimited for raising over $3,000,000.00 nationally through the sale of his artwork and the Silver Teal Award for raising over $1,000,000.00 in California.His life-long passion for golf has translated into painting commissions for Jack Nicklaus, ABC Sports, Fred Couples, U.S. Open, 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 created a diverse body of commission work for many corporations and collections including a life-size bronze for the Florence Griffith Joyner Memorial & Dedication.Additionally, the following corporations and groups have included commissioned sculptures by Chapple in their collections:Chiron Corporation, Laguna Audubon, Dupont Center, Foremost Insurance, Albert B. & Bert McKee Award, Ameriflex Corporate Collection, Cornerstone University, Arcadia Methodist Hospital, among others.Chapple's love of historic California landscape painters has inspired his most recent body of work, "Impressions of California,"; the June exhibition at DeRu's Fine Arts in Laguna Beach, California.

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