"Working from nature is full of opportunities and gifts. At some moments the spots of color can even seem to float in mid air creating an all-over abstraction, or the light shifts to reveal a new pattern among the trees - everything contributing to the process of making a painting."
-Kurt Moyer
Apple Tree, July, 48" x 48", Oil On Canvas
Kurt Moyer's oil paintings explore his primal and personal connection to the forest. The artist grew up near French Creek State Park, a woodland of over seven thousand acres. It was a special place that he explored and where he would let his mind wander. Years later, this connection with nature continues to be the focus in Moyer's painting. Spending time with the artist's work is akin to taking a leisurely walk through the woods. By slowing down and stopping in front of each painting, the viewer begins to notice what is normally overlooked - the space opens, depth emerges, and more is revealed. The canvases vibrate with the tension of the seen and sensed; the felt and the observed. When bathers appear in the paintings, they celebrate the connection between us and nature; a primal and perpetual connection which endures regardless of time or trend.
The canvases, some large, some modest in scale, are both immersive and receptive. Moyer creates inhabitable spaces and the energy of his brushwork reminds us of the flickering light of the sun as it finds its way through the dense forest canopy. At the same time, the viewer is aware of the artist's hand as the focus shifts between the image depicted and the beauty of the paint surface.
Kurt Moyer is from Southeastern Pennsylvania and a graduate of Kutztown University. He now resides in Pittsford, NY.
"Today I go into the forest looking for the kind of beauty that floods my senses."
- Kurt Moyer
Summer Glen, 30" x 34", Oil On Canvas
Larry Groff Interview with Kurt Moyer
2015
I am looking forward to meeting Kurt Moyer in July and August of this summer at the JSS in Civita in Civita Castellana, Italy where he is teaching an affiliate workshop. I am grateful to him for taking the time to have this email interview with me about his painting. Moyer lives and works in Rochester, NY and is represented by the The Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia and the Warm Springs Gallery in Charlottesville, VA. He has shown in the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania State Museum, Penn State University, and the Phillips Museum at Franklin and Marshall College among others. Moyer will be having a solo-show at the Gross McCleaf Gallery in January 2016 and will also be featured in a “Landscape” show there July 2015.
Savvy Painter
by Antrese Wood
Kurt Moyer is a landscape painter living in upstate New York. He pulls inspiration from nature, and from studying the master paintings that came before us.
As Kurt will tell you, some mysteries in painting don’t need to be solved in order to have a full, rich experience with them. Kurt is content to let some of that be so that he can focus on light, color, and the thread that weaves through his work and ties all the way back to Cezzane, Balthus, George Sorrells, and many other artists.
In this episode Kurt and I talk about seeing. About getting that authentic impression of color and light and not being a slave to your own eyes. We also talk about how new experiences or simply time can completely change the way you look at paintings that maybe you have seen many times before.
“From the beginning, I’ve wanted to make something beautiful out of my experiences, something to share with other people. For many years this meant painting landscapes and depicting the nuances of light and color. But now, without realism, my paintings are free to become something new.”
-Kurt Moyer, January 2022
Gross McCleaf is delighted to present Impressions, the newest body of work by artist Kurt Moyer. Moyer’s paintings range in size from twelve to one hundred and eighty inches, showcasing an enchanting array of vertical patterns and spotted colors that gracefully dance and play across canvases. Without illustrative depictions, Moyer manifests visions of Arcadia’s rapturous glowing light, blanketing a viewer’s field with dreamy abstractions.
Long before recorded history, humans identified divinity in the natural world. Across the globe, cave paintings and petroglyphs represent the land, the animals and the supernatural. Prehistoric burial mounds and henges of Northern Europe align with equinoxes and solstices. At Newgrange in Ireland, decorated stone carvings record the phases of the moon and depict rays emerging over the horizon at sunrise. Contemporary viewers can only infer the exact meanings of these monumental relics, etched with waves, spirals and diamonds juxtaposed with recognizable imagery.
As contemporary innovation, architecture, technology and design increasingly position each person as the master of their own exclusive universe, the artists in Concerning The Spiritual In Landscape have humbly venerated the life-giving light, ever-present matter and perpetual cycles of nature that bring forth all things.
“I have a longing for a certain beauty that’s hard to describe, but it’s usually associated with summer colors. My desire for this summertime feeling seems inexhaustible, and though I’ve been trying for many years, I don’t feel like I am ever really satisfied.”
- Kurt Moyer
For over a decade, Kurt Moyer’s work has combined his love of nature with his reverence for art history. Born in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Moyer spent much of his youth exploring the Barnes Collection in Merion, Pennsylvania. Moyer now resides in rural New York near Rochester where he spends his time plein air painting from the beginning of spring until late fall. These passions converge in Moyer’s new abstract paintings on view at Gross McCleaf...
Elizabeth Johnson: Realistic landscapes of farmland, forests, and streams were formerly your subject.
Landscapes from 2017 and 2018 seem to mark the transition to abstraction, especially the outliers Vista and Creek Walk. What entices you to paint abstractly?
Kurt Moyer: From the beginning, I’ve wanted to make something beautiful out of my experiences, something to share with other people. For many years this meant painting landscapes and depicting the nuances of light and color. These new abstract paintings still concern the light and my experiences in particular places. But now, without realism, they’re free to become something new. I feel I’m building a painting in real-time instead of making a recording of the past...
