David Moore: Painted Atmosphere

For over thirty years David Moore kept a studio and gave painting lessons at the historic property Montsalvat in Eltham, Australia’s oldest continuous artist community site established in 1934. Moore was particularly close to Sigmund Jörgensen, OAM (1940-2019) who oversaw the property from 1969, and his death led Moore to re-evaluate his professional circumstances. Previously based in Montmorency, Moore initially bought a cottage in Chewton in 2015 before making a permanent move to the Goldfields region.

Moore’s latest exhibition Painted Atmosphere (5-29 September 2024) demonstrates the ways in which his practice has been reinvigorated by the decision to relocate to Castlemaine, in west central Victoria, in 2019. The surrounding areas of Harcourt, Taradale, Malmsbury, Elphinstone and Maldon are replete with the varied formations, escarpments, and swathes of bush Moore finds visually compelling. “It was absolutely refreshing coming up here and finding the diversity of landscape. There’s woodland, there’s heath land, there’s sort of rocky outcrops, there are beautiful little vistas. A lot of people have said that when they see my work, they see little elements that they actually notice themselves when they’re going around the area,” he notes.

In recent years, Moore has adapted his working methods to embrace technology. “Until about eight years ago, I did what my father taught me to do, and that was paint en plein air and when you bring something home not to touch it. I can always remember my father saying, “if you can’t get it while you’re there son, you’ll never get it,” so I’ve always made sure that I’ve had that good, last long look out in the landscape,” he concedes. “Now all my paintings of the landscape are done from an iPad from a photograph that I’ve taken, but I wouldn’t be able to do that with the sort of freedom of brush marks if I hadn’t painted directly from the landscape. Most people that work from photographs tend to smooth things over, and I’m very wary of them looking as if they’re a photographic image.”  

Moore is a third-generation artist; his American grandfather Albert established a lithography business, Moore & Sons, in Melbourne. In the late 1930s, his father Graham Hinton Moore (1917-2000) attended the Melbourne art school run by Archibald Colquhoun (1894-1983) from 1926 to 1950. A former student of the “tonalist” painter (Duncan) Max Meldrum (1875-1955), Colquhoun’s instruction was aligned to the more “traditionalist” view that was dismissive of Modernism.

Moore embarked on his artistic journey at the precocious age of ten and considers his father to be his most significant influence. He agrees that Moore père would have considered himself a follower of the Meldrum school of tonal painting, but it is not something Moore adheres to. “I do look at the tonal relationship all over the surface of the painting, I’m comparing the tonal relationship all the time . . . there is that consciousness of relationship of tone, but I don’t tag myself as a ‘tonal painter,’’’ he asserts.  

The still life genre holds considerable appeal for Moore and has resulted in increasingly ambitious large-scale groupings of multiple vessels. Moore finds inspiration in the work of Italian painter and printmaker Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), in terms of his elevation of everyday objects as suitable subject-matter. Moore’s still life works bear some resemblance to the ceramic compositions of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, OAM (1935-2013). “I’m very aware of her work, and I think subconsciously that’s there. I’ve been a couple of times to the Museo Morandi in Bologna, and when I looked at his objects, of which there are only a few dozen, that he painted all his still lifes from, they did have a particular look about them, they were a one-person selection of objects,” he recalls. “I definitely don’t look for ‘nice’ objects to do ‘nice’ paintings from. I like ordinary objects in order that I can then bring something to them. The arranging is quite important because even though there’s a spontaneity to the placement and setting them up, it’s an experience I’ve had before where I sense where things need to be placed in relation to each other.”

Several works depicting a ballet costume may seem incongruous, but Moore has returned to this theme periodically since his time at Montsalvat. The delicacy of the romantic tutu was informed by the artist’s exposure to two paintings by Clarice Beckett (1887-1935), who was also a student of Meldrum in 1917. The small panels depict Anna Pavlova (1881-1931), who toured Australia for the second time in 1929. Moore saw the works at the home of Dr. Rosalind Hollinrake in the late 1980s; they are now in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Hollinrake’s advocacy for Beckett’s work established the artist’s posthumous reputation as one of Australia’s most important Modernist painters.

Moore considers these textile-focused works to be another form of still life. “I think the fact that it’s a solid form in a sense, it’s a contained object, even though it’s a dress. I see it as a container of the body, and sort of like a vessel, but rather than a hard surface it’s got the transparency of the tulle”, he observes. “One thing I found a little bit tricky was there are times in the painting when I want to put the paint on quite a lot thicker and I had to resist that a little bit with the dresses and paint them a little bit more thinly in order to get that feeling, but that in itself was a challenge for me too. I saw it as just a lovely object, or lovely thing to paint, and it’s been a revelation and really quite enjoyable that other people have responded.”  

Indeed, there is some correlation between the airiness of the tulle and Moore’s penchant for depicting cloud formations. “It’s not so much that the clouds are different here to other areas where they build up, but because of the landscape you see these little vignettes with the clouds in them and people relate to that.” Moore’s studio process is one that ultimately serves to reinforce his strengths, “I find that painting the landscape gives me the freedom to paint loosely and the observation of the still life sort of forces me to concentrate hard, and so they complement each other. I find that if I work on a series of landscapes and then I do a still life I bring a freshness and directness into the still life, and then when I’m painting the landscapes I just make sure that proportions and things are correct because the observation from the still life helps me do that . . . I love that prolonged concentration.”

EXHIBITION
David Moore: Painted Atmosphere
5 – 29 September 2024
Cascade Art Gallery, VIC