"Point Lobos Fog 30" x 24" Charcoal on Paper Over the past twenty-five years, Dave Dalton (b. 1952) has built a reputation as one of the finest marine and landscape painters in the western United States. If a viewer was to use one adjective to describe Dalton's marine works, it would be "clarity," for there is a crisp directness to his vision of the sea. Dalton does not see the ocean as dark or ominous in the 19th-century tradition so much as he chooses to present us with pleasant, uplifting views, often filled with radiant light. Dalton was born in Pontiac, Michigan. His father, Lee T. Dalton, was an artist, and thus encouraged his son's artistic pursuits. However, Dalton initially chose the practical career of a teacher before turning to the fine arts in his mid-twenties. Dalton has now now made his living as an artist for more than half his life and he maintains a studio on the central coast where he is never far from one of his favorite painting or surfing spots. It was in fact his passion for surfing that initially led to Dalton's interest in the ocean as a subject for his painting.