Welcome to the the first blog, a quick update with brief commentary of the work of Hyatt and Anne Moore, artists and human beings. It was five years ago we published the first e-gallery. It’s been coming out every couple of months since, as e-mail attachment, with apparent appreciation among friends and friends of friends, and anyone else who learned of it and signed on. This blog is a technological update, easier to make, published more frequently, briefer, and intended as a quick refreshment for an otherwise art-starved day. We’ll continue to call it e-gallery, the term blog (short for “web-log”) not having much warmth. A gallery visit, on the other hand, is a rare treat that nourishes the soul.
(Above) Saddleback Window, Charcoal, 30”x44,” (could alternately called “Another Self-Portrait” what with me standing there in the shadows at a drawing easel). With all these, you can click on the picture for a larger view. (Use your return arrow to get back.)
So this first blog is really e-gallery number 31. And being another first, perhaps it’s fitting to go back to basics with a couple of drawings . . . drawing being the basis for painting generally.
A Class in Drawing
Because learning is life-long activity, a year ago I enrolled in “Introduction to Drawing” at the local community college, Saddleback. Though I’ve been drawing a long time, I’d seen work of this instructor’s first-semester students and was impressed. Professor Leng Chung got her beginnings in Asia and completed her art training in America. Besides technique and work ethic she adds all manner of philosophical opinion; each class my sketch book fills up with her words. The drawings here came out of my work in that class. Like I said, it was an introductory level, but there was none of the normal stuff of basic shapes, shadows and highlight, five kinds of perspective, and whatever else you’d think would be covered at the outset. She didn’t teach pencil, but charcoal, “basically a painting medium,” with emphasis on (the infinite aspect of) values. She pushed drawing large, using the whole body, and “structure, structure, structure,” the basis for everything else. Like that.
(Above) Fish, Flower, Mirror, Charcoal, 30″x22″
These Pieces
I also show these pieces because they’re rare for me. I normally don’t make drawings, being more of a sketcher. Drawings are more complete, more “finished.” These are big, they’re “scenes,” and they required several sessions. Drawing reflections, for example, is tricky business, and you may or may not recognize that it’s one wood fish and one flower vase but doubled by the mirror. Then there’s the distant view (below). To you it’s a view from the school, the toll road’s merge with the freeway, a ball-field fence, a wheel barrow, and mostly bare hills. But to me it was 150 variations of gray scale, finding ways to build shade over my head as the sun kept moving, trying to freeze shadows in the drawing for the same reason, indicating bushes and trees without worrying about all their detail, and a thousand other things.
(Above) View from Saddleback, Charcoal, 30”x44.” Plein air painting is rare enough for me, all the more plein air drawing, coming back to the same spot on repeated days.
Future e-galleries
That’s it for this issue. In the future we’ll share new work . . . sometimes according to some logical theme, sometimes not. Sometimes we’ll reveal how a given piece was made, a topic I find interesting and I think others will too. It’ll be an ongoing view of progress and interests, in a pursuit of beauty and meaning. As always it will include Anne’s art as well as mine. By the way, you can always look at the earlier e-galleries by clicking on the link in the column at the top right of this page.
Current Shows
As it happens, both Anne and I are having shows right now, and coincidentally both are in churches. Each of these has wide entry halls and both welcome art. The buildings are open during the week, and of course Sunday mornings. Here are the details:
20 pieces of recent work (monotypes) by Anne Moore at:
Heritage Christian Fellowship
190 Avenida La Pata
San Clemente, California
39 paintings (mostly large) by Hyatt Moore at:
Calvary Chapel Capo Beach
25975 Domigo Avenue
Capistrano Beach, California
Through June, 2008