Today we’d like to introduce you to Larry Moore.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I have a rather diverse background as a visual communicator. I started in high-school airbrushing t-shirts, murals, and vans. Have air guns will travel. From there a major in graphic design lead me into advertising and design, both of which I enjoyed because I love solving problems. My true passion was art, so I left advertising mid-eighties to pursue a career in commercial illustration.
Whenever I was asked what the difference was between illustration and fine art, I would usually say, “Illustrators got paid for their work.” It was a marvelous career. Every problem was different, the formats varied from children’s books to ice cream packaging to theater posters to book covers. My favorite work was editorial, the artwork you see that accompanies an article in a magazine. It was fun to encapsulate the message of the text within a single image, and the more compelling and thought provoking it was, the greater the chance the article would get read.
The real difference between fine art and illustration is that a fine artist is solving his or her own problems, the illustrator is solving a problem on behalf of an art director that represents a product that represents the company and the idea must make sense to a wide variety of people.
Ironically, I abandoned illustration after 35 years in that field to solve my own visual problems. It’s a lot harder than solving a client. But, fortunately, my background in problem solving made for an engaging and successful career in fine art.
My fine art career actually started outside, painting on location in the 80’s or, as it is most popularly known, painting en plein air. Early this century, I discovered plein air events. Which are sort of like an Olympic sport but with an easel. The artists are invited to come to some place exotic, like Laguna, CA or the Grand Canyon or Curacao and paint for the week, turning in the work at the week’s end to (hopefully) sell and pay for airfare home. I loved it. Now my painting time is in the studio, no airfare, no mosquitos or Lyme disease, no sunburns.
Throughout my career(s) I’ve been a teacher, at first I taught college level and eventually shifted into workshops where I now teach the same problem solving methods I acquired over my rather lengthy career. As a 30-year veteran instructor I became acutely aware that no one understood the creative process, probably because it’s not taught anywhere. I became so passionate about teaching this process that I wrote a book about it, fishing for elephants: Insights and exercises to inspire authentic creativity.
Please tell us about your art.
My work as a painter is in two very different camps simultaneously; realism and abstract. My realist work is more narrative-based and my abstracts are just pure creative fun, much like a jazz jam in the garage with your besties. What I learn in one camp I bring to the other. Currently, I’m working on a one-man show with a series that started in 2014 called Intrusion.
Intrusion, as a whole, asks a simple question, “Who is intruding on whom?” Each painting represents an animal (I have a great passion for nature) situated in an environment, usually an abandoned house or decaying structure, that has no business being there whatsoever. Usually there’s an environmental undercurrent to each piece, but I have found looking at the body of work that these paintings are also allegories, either personal stories of my own life or the human condition.
I have found that, no matter my original intent for each piece, the viewers readily assign their own narrative. One painting featured a baboon and a cassowary together in an abandoned office space, it represented my time in advertising with the baboon symbolizing the creative side and the cassowary, the account service side. Cassowary’s are notoriously mean animals. The woman who purchased it said that it reminded her of her family.
They are very satisfying to make and more often than not I’m as excited as anyone to see what the story is going to be.
What do you think is the biggest challenge facing artists today?
Self-doubt. It’s a killer. The very first chapter in my book, Resistance, deals with the psychology of being an artist: overcoming fear, reframing how we see a problem, figuring out what’s important and what isn’t. Self-doubt (basically fear) is a strong force that can lead an artist down an inauthentic path, the result is usually a quiet dissatisfaction with the work or doubt in one’s abilities. I’ve seen this over and over in my years as an artist and instructor.
The biggest destroyer of real creativity is fear. It’s fairly easy to learn someone else’s process of how to paint the figure or a vase of flowers, but when the creator is faced with pursuing true authenticity, it means hanging out on the thin branches and that can be some scary stuff. My goal with the book is to present a relatively simple way to get around all that fear and live a full and authentic life. It’s the thing I am most proud of in my life.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
The easiest way to view my work, of course, is online at www.larrymoorestudios.com where one can see each body of work and find the nearest gallery. If anyone is curious about my book on creativity (for artists and other humans) please visit www.fishing4elephants.com. The book, by the way, is my real passion, teaching creativity.
Contact Info:
- Address: Larry Moore
Horton Hayes Fine Art Studio
27 1/2 State Street
Charleston, SC
29410 - Website: www.larrymoorestudios.com
- Phone: 407-222-8585
- Email: larry@larrymoorestudios.com
- Instagram: Larry_Moore_Studios
- Facebook: Larry Moore Studios
- Other: www.fishing4elephants.com
Image Credit:
All art created by Larry Moore
Book cover by Jeff Matz
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