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. 

While Moyer enjoys and finds inspiration from painting in nature, his abstract works are created in the studio, away from visual reference. As a result, Moyer has shifted away from representation in search of a way to create paintings with a purity of expression and form. A memory or feeling might spark the idea for a painting, but as the marks and colors are placed on the canvas, the artwork takes over. Moyer then follows the cues found within the painting’s form to complete the work. He describes the symbiotic relationship that he seeks within the color relationships as the appearance of “giving and receiving light”. Referring to the illusory phenomena of the natural world, Moyer’s works capture summer sunlight and wayward beams in a way that goes beyond the established aspects of painting to convey a transcendent or even sublime experience.