As a long time member of David's Painting Group, I have been been truly blessed. To have been the beneficiary of such wisdom, wit, and especially a wealth of straightforward aesthetic advice that has nourished me all these years has been a great honor to me. Specifically, he taught me how to look at Velazquez (who I'd struggled to understand for many fruitless years) in a far more sophisticated but simple way than I ever could've managed to find on my own. And his stressing of the importance of preserving line, even in media involving such amorphous forms as pastel and watercolor, has been an absolute key for me. But more generally, and more importantly, his humor and decency have made the Painting Group studio a joy to return to week after week. And his deep, yet deeply unpretentious appreciation of what is truly good in art, the human touch behind it, offered a rare gift in this age of fleeting technological pleasures. I will miss him greatly.

Thank you,

Geoffrey Atkin