Jay Moore grew up in Evergreen, Colorado, spending nearly every waking moment outdoors: fishing, camping, swimming, and absorbing the subtleties of nature that every good sportsman and artists needs. “My bond with nature formed early and became deeply rooted,” he says. When he began painting he did only plein air paintings for five years and honed his observational skills. “Spending so much time outdoors,” he says, “you get in tune with nature’s rhythms.
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Jay Moore grew up in Evergreen, Colorado, spending nearly every waking moment outdoors: fishing, camping, swimming, and absorbing the subtleties of nature that every good sportsman and artists needs. “My bond with nature formed early and became deeply rooted,” he says. When he began painting he did only plein air paintings for five years and honed his observational skills. “Spending so much time outdoors,” he says, “you get in tune with nature’s rhythms. What the temperature is, when rain is imminent, what month it is by the water level in a stream. Once you understand it on that level then you can interpret it a lot better.”
He graduated at the top of his class from the Colorado Institute of Art and worked in graphic design and illustration for several years. It was a plein air painting workshop with the master landscape painter Clyde Aspevig that convinced him to concentrate full-time on painting.
The skills he has developed in both observing and painting have landed his paintings in magazines, exhibitions, and collections across the country. He has been on the cover of Western Art Collector magazine twice, most recently in January 2014. This year his work appears in The Russell at the C.M. Russell Museum, the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Quest for the West at the Eiteljorg Museum, the Rims to Ruins exhibition at the Denver Public Library, as well as the Fall Classic Show and Masters In Miniature Invitational Show at Trailside Galleries. He has also been selected for the 2015 Masters of the American West at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles.
“If every artist has a subject that is their ‘sweet spot’,” Jay says, “something that they love to paint and that they become known for, mine would be water. I just love painting and trying to achieve the illusion of water. I am challenged by capturing the depth, the current, the reflections, ripples, whatever... Whether it be streams, rivers, lakes, oceans, waterfalls, I love it all. As a fly fisherman, and I think that study of rivers from a fishing stand point complements my artistic interest in the subject. I am always striving to achieve a higher level of expertise in capturing the feeling of water. Like Norman McClean said in his book, A River Runs Through It, ‘I am haunted by water….’”
His work is in the collections of the Denver Art Museum and the Pioneer Museum in Colorado Springs as well as many corporate and private collections. His collectors include former Commerce Secretary and Mrs. Don Evans, Walmart Chairman and Mrs. Rob Walton, Uline Corporation presidents Dick & Elizabeth Uihlein, as well as the British rocker and Colorado resident Joe Cocker.
Jay has said, “To create a painting worthy of my collectors, I need to experience the location--breathe the air and crunch the leaves underfoot.” That experience and that goal are reflected in the comments of James Nottage, Vice President and Chief Curatorial Officer of the Eiteljorg Museum. “Landscape paintings by Jay Moore are beautiful works that convey the artist’s strong sense of place. They are realist creations that give you impressions of seasons and expressions of both sky and earth. They are a treat for the imagination that can make you think you have been there or maybe want to go there.”
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