As a plein-air painter myself, I went crazy for Robert Moore’s juicy landscapes the first time I saw one of his solo exhibitions in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. What an honor it was, then, to sit down and talk with this artist whose work I find so moving and inspiring.
JK: Robert, you obviously love nature, whether it’s landscapes or still life objects. Tell me about that.
RM: My love for nature goes straight to my love for the Creator. When I paint, in a way it’s an act of worship, it’s seeking God. Nature is so awesome. There’s design and order everywhere, and the more you unlock and comprehend this intent and the beauty, the more you see that there is a God. It’s cliché but true. It’s difficult to do even a two-dimensional replication of a piece of nature, but when you try, you see how awesome God is and how intricate His creation. That sums up my love.
JK: Wow, that was such a great answer, I feel like we’ve said everything we need to say! But I do have other questions. Let’s talk about plein-air painting. What do you like about it? What attracts you to a subject?
RM: What attracts me to plein air is my rearing, growing up on a farm, my love for being in the mountains and in the elements. When I’m out painting, I'm reaping from my past experiences and sowing the seeds of passion for my future paintings.
What attracts me to a subject is design, simplified forms, and beautiful shapes. I look for a strong design and then have a color search within those few masses of value. Because of this, one of my favorite subjects is a grove of aspen trees. These give me the simple, clear designs of the verticals against the masses, and the white trunks allow me to try different color progressions and color systems. Aspens are a great subject for experimenting and learning the language of color.
JK: Okay, plein-air artist to plein-air artist, what are some of your best tips I could steal?
RM: Well, sister, I think the most important thing is to be comfortable and have all the equipment you need. I wouldn’t expect others to follow suit with what I do, but I go out with a four-wheel ATV that has a large metal box filled with all of my painting gear. Or I work off the back of my pick-up truck.
And don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Shorten your learning process by finding a good teacher who can help identify the problems, give honest critiques, and offer direction.
Another good practice, depending on where you are in your development, is to paint things with backlight. That’s the reason why sunrise and sunset are such good painting times. Information is clearly communicated, with values clearly defined, lights against dark. Then you can experiment with your color progressions. Start with painting the simple masses, and then add more closely related and complex color while maintaining the simple, clear value masses.
Wait, here’s another: When you paint, pretend as if you’re on the phone, describing what you’re seeing to the other person. You wouldn’t describe how many leaves are on the trees, would you? First, you’d describe the major shapes, the large elements, the relationships, and then you might add some detail. Keep that in mind, and in 15 minutes you’ll have made a clear, simple statement. Just don’t lose it in the next two hours of painting!
JK: That’s a great analogy! Okay, I’ve talked to a lot of fellow artists who are intimidated by painting outside, in part because it’s easy to get overwhelmed by how much information is out there. How do you deal with that?
RM: What really simplifies the search is having identified what I’m looking for. You know, the question properly defined is its own solution. So even if I’m painting in mid-day when it’s easy to get lost in all those broken shapes and myriad color progressions, I always remember I’m looking for simplified elements.
As I receive the harvest from my years of seeding time, a larger percentage of my plein-air paintings turn out well. Of course, I still have a “dog” pile, with a weenie roast in the spring to get rid of them!
My seeding time lasted 10 years until I learned to create paintings that have the taste of truth and depth,
but I never considered quitting.
JK: Wait, what was that? What does “the question properly defined is its own solution” mean?
RM: You have to learn to phrase questions clearly. For example, when you’re self-critiquing, you have to learn to say more than just, “That doesn’t look right.” Only when you can define what the problem is will you find the solution. In the case of finding a subject, I’ve already established that I’m looking for a simple design of strong shapes, which makes that easier to find when I’m out on location.
JK: Sometimes I go out and I don’t immediately see something I want to paint. Now, some people say you should limit your search time and challenge yourself to make a good painting out of whatever you find. Others say you should hold out for inspiration. Which school of thought do you believe?
RM: Well, I don’t want to put my gym clothes on and then not get sweaty. I need to do the work so I can reap a harvest. So it doesn’t matter if I’m passionate about a subject, it’s a matter of discipline. But most of the time, I do see something that inspires me or serves as a springboard for improving my skill.
JK: Yes, let’s talk about your studio work. How do these two practices relate?
RM: For me, the studio process is practice for the game of painting from real life. In the studio, I use photographic references, use a computer to manipulate and simplify them, and then work from those simplified images. I’ve made it an easier process. But when I’m outside, I don’t have those tools so I have to use the skills I’ve honed in the studio.
On another level, there’s the bread-and-butter factor. I’ve got six children to feed! In the past, the studio was the place where I created most of my saleable, marketable pieces. But now, all that learning and struggle is yielding a harvest, so I’m satisfied with an almost equal number of my works created in the field.
JK: I noticed that a lot of your studio works are really big. I’ve never tried to tackle anything like that. What’s it like to paint on such a large canvas?
RM: I think it must be like giving birth. It’s not that it takes that long—compared to the gestation, it’s a relatively short time—but it takes a lot of energy to face ten or twelve feet of canvas. I can’t do it every day because it takes so much out of me. And yet, it’s basically the same process. I start with simplified masses with varied silhouettes, then I go into the interior of those masses and put in harmonious color and color progressions, and finally I lose the edges between the masses to create a path for the eye to travel through the composition.
JK: One of things I love most about your paintings is that really heavy, juicy impasto. Why and how do you achieve that?
RM: That’s a great question! Why I do it is because it’s the only way I can get color that feels natural to me. Consider this: From a distance a mountain looks gray, but up close there’s every color in the rainbow in those rocks. So to get color that feels natural, I need to pick up five or six variations within each stroke. You can play a melody with one note, but it’s much richer with a chord; you can communicate a clean design with one color per mass, but I prefer to use the broken color that’s in nature.
To do this technique requires a lot of paint and a 40-inch glass palette in my studio. I buy my paint by the gallon! I’ll start by mixing a range of related color—for example, a range of warm oranges and a range of cool blues—and I’ll mix hundreds of little steps between the two. Then I’ll take my painting knife blade, and like skipping a rock across the water, I’ll pick up a little of each color before I lay it on with the knife blade. Each stroke is marbled with color, but because they’re all the same value the design will still read well.
These practices come, in part, from the fact that I’m colorblind. I can’t re-mix a color or distinguish between two colors that are the same value, so I’ve had to develop a special sense of how to use my palette. I have to approach color from a different direction.
JK: Are you kidding me?! It must have been so hard to learn to paint when you’re colorblind. You obviously have a strong desire to be an artist.
RM: Yes, it has been frustrating, but at the end of Galatians in the Bible, it says you will reap the harvest if you don’t give up. My seeding time lasted 10 years until I learned to create paintings that have the taste of truth and depth, but I never considered quitting. Being an artist isn’t always fun but it’s always rewarding.
JK: That’s amazing. Looking ahead, what are some of your goals and projects for the future?
RM: I’m a teacher, and I’d like to find more ways to share that. I’d like to publish a book of art instruction, and I’ve recorded a lot of demos on DVD. Now I’ve just got to learn how to get this information out there.
JK: That sounds great. Thank you so much for sharing all that you’ve shared with us! |
