This article is part of a special series celebrating the 2025 inductees into the Plein Air Easton Hall of Fame. Now in its second year, the Hall of Fame honors individuals, organizations, and patrons whose dedication, creativity, and support have helped shape Plein Air Easton into the nationally recognized event it is today.
David Grafton didn’t talk much about legacy. He wasn’t one to take up a lot of space. But those who knew him understood what he built—not just with his brush, but with the kind of open door that pulled a whole community into orbit.
Dave, who passed away before the pandemic, is being honored posthumously this year for his role in shaping Plein Air Easton and nurturing its early artistic community.
“Dave and I met in Easton,” said artist Stephen Griffin, his friend and gallery partner. “I was in Troika Gallery at the time, and his wife wasn’t in great health. I offered to help out—next thing you know, we were business partners for seven or eight years, running the Grafton Gallery together.”
By the time the two met, Dave had already carved out a place for himself as a painter. He was a big guy with a bigger personality, the kind of person who wanted to talk to everybody, learn their stories, and tell a few of his own. “He grew up in New Jersey, and I was from Philly, but it was wild how much we had in common. We’d been to the same places, had some of the same teachers at PAFA (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts). He was older than me by maybe 20 years, but it didn’t matter. We just clicked.”
When Plein Air Easton was first being imagined, David was part of the conversation. “It was Nancy Tankersley who went to Al Bond with the idea,” Stephen said, “but Dave was there from the start, in the room, having the meetings, being part of what this thing could be. He had the gallery, he knew the artists in town, and Easton was just starting to become an arts town.”
He didn’t just show up for the big decisions. He made the gallery a kind of home base. “After a long day out painting, people would drift in. It’d be eight o’clock at night, and we’d be sitting around in the gallery with some wine and food, just talking. That’s what Dave did—he created a space where people could connect. Artists from all over the country, and later, the world. It was always welcoming. Always.”
Though Dave only painted in the competition for a few years, his influence ran deeper than the number of canvases he completed. “Everybody calls Plein Air Easton the Ironman of outdoor painting,” Griffin said. “It’s intense. Hot, competitive, nonstop. Dave was older and already respected—he didn’t need to be out there sweating it out every year. But he was still part of it. Always in the dialog. Always supporting the artists.”
He also served as a judge at other regional events, supported local arts councils, and brought a quiet professionalism to everything he did. But for Griffin, it was the personal stories that revealed the most about his friend.
“Dave loved to fish—surf fishing off the Jersey shore, the Delaware Bay, down in Maryland. I love to fish too, so we had all these stories, swapping tales about what we caught, where we went, what we used. And we’d bring our paint boxes too—you’d fish, then you’d paint the day.”
His paintings reflected that life. “What I always admired about Dave’s work was his skies. They told a story without telling too much. There’d be so little there, but somehow it made you feel something. People would come into the gallery and say it. They’d look at one of his skies and just stop. And I could tell them, ‘Yeah, I know where that was. I know the day he painted it. I was there.”
There was also a softness in how Dave related to people. “He loved talking,” Stephen said. “Not small talk. Real conversations. He was just so open. That’s rare. You don’t see that kind of openness in everyone, especially in the art world. But Dave had it.”
He also had pride in where he came from—and where he landed. Cape Henlopen was one of his favorite places to paint, and it turned out Stephen’s father had been stationed there when he was a kid. “We had so many overlaps like that. I knew the places he painted because I’d been there too, as a child. We just understood each other.”
It’s hard for Stephen to remember exactly when Dave passed away. He remembers it being sometime before the pandemic, in that blurry stretch of time that feels both recent and far away. But the imprint he left is still visible. You can see it in the friendships that were born in his gallery. In the artists who keep coming back to Easton year after year. In the way people remember how it felt to walk into that space and be welcomed. There was no big moment, no headline. Just a quiet absence that those closest to him still feel. “Yeah,” Stephen said. “I miss him. We all do.”
He’s not forgotten. His fingerprints are still on the fabric of Plein Air Easton—in the way artists gather after a long day, in the quiet confidence of the work on display, in the gallery spaces that welcome instead of intimidate.
“Dave was never chasing the spotlight,” Stephen said. “He just wanted to paint. And have good people around.”
That turned out to be more than enough.
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Very nicely said, Steve.