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Norma Jean Moore
Norma Jean Moore is a full-time artist living in San Antonio, Texas. Her studio is located behind her house in what is locally known as a casita. Her volunteer work as an Alamo Area Master Naturalist and her membership in the local Native Plant Society has helped to produce a more novel and native landscape that informs her painting practice.
Moore carries the remnants of photographs, sketches, and sentient memories from her time in nature into the studio to explore in paintings. She aspires to capture the sense of discovery experienced on these wanderings in her work. Wandering local parks and wilderness trails also provides an apt metaphor for her painting process. “A sense of being in unknown territory, unable to see the end destination – there’s a serendipity in walking or hiking. You keep putting one step in front of the other. You just give yourself over to it.”
When not painting, she gives back to the land, working on her own and with environmental groups to create a variety of “pocket” landscapes that will help support and sustain an ecology that is disappearing.
Moore’s work can be found in museums and private collections, and she shows extensively throughout Texas and the Southwest. Her paintings have been exhibited at or collected by the Art Museum of South Texas, the Mexic-Arte Museum Austin, the Institute for Latin Studies at Norte Dame University, the Southwest School of Art, and the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts. More information can be found a ... view more »
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MORE ABOUT THIS ARTIST
Artist Medium: Acrylic
Artist Statement of Work
Tell us about your work (style, approach, philosophy, subject and/or theme):
On the ground the cycle of life and death is played out-as the flower dies, its seed matures and seeks fertile ground to begin the cycle again. This is part of the ground's ever-changing surfaces as the earth transitions from season to season. A quiet, dynamic force is always present. It intimacy is much more complex than traditional panoramic scenes that include a distant view with a horizon line separating the land and sky lending the viewer to feel a larger encompassing view of space/nature. By focusing on the space under our feet, I am able to explore the transformations of this biological ecosystem.
There are strong references to leaves, rocks, water and flowers in my work. The forms in my paintings include specific seed-heads, leaves, and flowers that I have found in my backyard. Using a jeweler's loupe, I am able to view and find inspiration in the microscopic forms, These small tiny fragments of life are wonderfully beautiful and monumental for me.
