Landscapes Through Time with David Dunlop 2009 Emmy Award Winning PBS Series Purchase Series Reviews of the Series View Movie Clips from the Series

Our goal was to provide a new way of presenting the contextualization of art by examining the who, where, why and how of an important artist and his art.  This series explores the key moments in the artist’s life, the artistic traditions from which he emerged, the contemporaneous artistic, philosophical and scientific developments that influenced his work and important historical events of the times.   By combining these disparate elements with a demonstration by David of the actual painting techniques used by the artist at the same location where he painted, we believe our series provides a unique, informative perspective for the artist as well as the general public.  When you look at a painting in a museum,  what was the story about the artist and what the artist was doing or trying to do with that painting that makes it interesting, exciting and even relevant to the viewer?

Our programs are not intended to be biographies of the artist’s lives, but they instead synthesize visual concepts, supporting materials and editing techniques with David’s energetic and engaging style to  actively involve the viewer in the artist’s creative process.   Our goal was to create a new, entertaining television format that uses the innate visual possibilities of television to explore the artistic, historical, perceptual and technical concepts discussed by David in each program. We have tried to create television  that would allow David’s multidimensional and inspiring manner  to provide a window into the creative process –to see how art is actually created by specific artists at a specific time with specific techniques.  

We choose a group of artists in France who are extremely well known, Delacoix, Courbet, van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne and Renoir. These artists allowed us to explore the confluence of  new ideas, new tools and new methods that changed art during this period and effected how people saw and experienced their world.  These included revelations about the science of color and light; a scientific realization of vision as subjective phenomena; the dramatically changing social milieu as a result of industrialization and the emergence of a new leisure class; the commercial development of  new pigments and their new remarkable portability in lead tubes which allowed painters to more easily paint outside;  the role of photography in usurping the transcriptive role of painting;  an appreciation of  the natural world through the development of  new sciences, such as geology and meteorology; and an earnest effort to find a different vocabulary in paint untethered to earlier traditions, traditions which by 1870 appeared stale, dull and constricted.   Additionally,  a new bourgeois public’s appetite to see themselves at play in familiar settings encouraged  a new form of painting with new subjects.   David and I both love Turner, who painted on the Normandy Coast, and we included an episode of his paintings in Honfleur.

We then explored the American artists who were influenced by the French Impressionists and exported many of their ideas to the east coast of the United States at the end of the 19th century.   The American Impressionists  were different from the French Impressionists; they did not reject the traditions and techniques of their artistic predecessors, the Hudson River Painters, considered the first indigenous group of  American painters.  We selected Kaaterskill Falls as the location for one of the Hudson River programs because Thomas Cole, the father of the Hudson River painters, painted one of the first Hudson River paintings from that majestic location.   We then explored the works of Inness and Kensett, two artists who are considered part of the later group of  American artists, the  Luminists.

David is represented in many galleries and national and international art collections.   He is also a popular and thoughtful lecturer, giving talks and workshops around the country and in many museums and galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. 

David has an enthusiastic, inspiring and informative teaching style, sharing his wide knowledge and passion for painting theory, history and methods with the audience in a warm and engaging manner. David is the host of a four-DVD series entitled Painting Landscapes with David Dunlop  (Program 1 - Oil, Program 2 - Acrylic, Program 3 – Watercolor, and Program 4 - Painting in Tuscany - Oil).   David creates the feeling in a television audience that they are actually with him in one of his workshops.  David lives in Connecticut with his wife Rebecca Hoefer.

is the President of SimmonsArt Inc. and is producing and directing the Series.   She was also awarded a 2009 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Writing in the Special Class Category for the PBS series Landscapes through Time with David Dunlop and was nominated for Outstanding Directing.  She is a painter who has studied with David Dunlop.  She produced and directed the series of DVDs with him that served as the inspiration for this PBS series.  She began her career as an entertainment lawyer in private practice, working with film companies such as New Line Cinema and Miramax.  Connie moved in-house to serve as a vice president at business affairs at Columbia Tri Star in 1990.   She then was part of the management team that launched the Food Network in 1993 and she served as its Executive Vice President.   She currently serves on the board of the Cape Cod Theatre Project.

Connie spent her first years in Dallas, Texas and learned to paint with her grandmother Altha Simmons, a Dallas art teacher.   She received her BA in History at the University of Texas at Austin.  She then moved to New York City and received her JD from Columbia Law School.   She lives in New York City with her husband Jim Krugman  and Bucky, Gracie and Tad.

CPTV has been awarded over 40 Emmy awards and nearly 200 Emmy nominations. Additional honors include CINE Golden Eagle Awards, American Film Institute awards, and accolades from The New York and Chicago Film Festivals, Associated Press, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, among others. CPTV has an industry-wide reputation for fiscal and creative responsibility, with a consistent record of delivering projects within established budgets and projected timelines.   In 2004, CPTV moved into a new, state-of-the-art production facility in Hartford, Connecticut, equipped with the latest digital technology.

Purchase 3 DVD Set of Entire Series $79.95

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