Central Victorian Landscape paintings by David Moore
We are delighted to be hosting a second solo exhibition of paintings by David Moore.
In this exhibition, the artist explores big clouds and the back roads, the moody, epic and poetic landscapes of Harcourt, Castlemaine, Maldon and surrounds.
Artist Floor Talks: Sunday 2pm, 23 October and November 13, 2022
Image Credit: IAN HILL PHOTOGRAPHER
ALL ARTWORKS ARE FRAMED IN AUSTRALIAN TIMBERS.
SOLD David Moore
No. 29 ‘Toward the Storm’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size:83 x 60 cm
Price: $ 5,500
David Moore
No 1. ‘Over the Way’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size:76 x 56 cm
Price: $ 5,000
David Moore
No 24. ‘Summer Times, Castlemaine’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size:111 x 91 cm
Price: $ 8,500
David Moore
No. 21 ‘Around the Bend’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size:91 x 70 cm
Price: $ 6,000
David Moore
No. 23 ‘The Right Way, Castlemaine’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size:92 x 61 cm
Price: $ 5,500
David Moore
No. 25 ‘Summer Hillside, Harcourt’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size:111 x 91 cm
Price: $ 8,500
David Moore
No. 30 ‘Heading South’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size:76 x 55 cm
Price: $ 5,000
David Moore
No. 16 ‘Hillside Castlemaine’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size: 61 x 40 cm
Price: $ 4,400
David Moore
No. 5 ‘Avoca Evening’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size: 46 x 31 cm
Price: $ 3,600
David Moore
No. 30 ‘Evening Sky Kyneton’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size: 61 x 50 cm
Price: $ 4,800
SOLD David Moore
No. 20 ‘Over the Rise’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size: 50 x 40 cm
Price: $ 4,200
David Moore
No. 18 ‘Even Glow’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size: 40 x 33 cm
Price: $ 3,300
SOLD David Moore
No. 31 ‘Distance’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size: 50 x 25 cm
Price: $ 3,800
David Moore
No. 14 ‘Castlemaine Gold’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 56 x 24 cm
Price: $ 2,800
SOLD David Moore
No. 6 ‘Wet Evening, Maldon’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 38 x 20 cm
Price: $ 2,400
David Moore
No. 8 ‘Twilight’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 30 x 20 cm
Price: $ 2,300
SOLD David Moore
No. 9 ’Autumn Evening
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 30 x 20 cm
Price: $ 2,300
SOLD David Moore
No. 35 ‘Summer Evening’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 35 x 15 cm
Price: $ 2,200
SOLD David Moore
No. 36 ‘Broken Light’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 35 x 15 cm
Price: $ 2,200
David Moore
No. 34 ‘Autumn Shadows’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 35 x 15 cm
Price: $ 2,200
David Moore
No. 11 ‘Malmsbury Sky’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 29 x 13 cm
Price: $ 2,000
David Moore
No. 19 ‘Taradale Summer’
Medium: Oil onLinen
Size: 66 x 30 cm
Price: $ 3,900
David Moore
No. 40 ‘The Clearing’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 40 x 17 cm
Price: $ 2,500
SOLD David Moore
No. 12 ‘Beyond the Shadows’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 25 x 13 cm
Price: $ 2,000
David Moore
No. 33 ‘Castlemaine Hillside’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 35 x 15 cm
Price: $ 2,200
David More
No. 17 ‘The Right Way’
Medium: Oil on Linen
Size: 45 x 35 cm
Price: $ 3,600
SOLD David Moore
No. 27 ‘Travelling South’
Medium: Oil on Linen
Size: 83 x 60 cm
Price: $ 5,500
David Moore
No. 22 ‘Evening Stroll’
Medium: Oil on Linen
Size: 76 x 60 cm
Price: $ 5,000
SOLD David Moore
No. 39 ‘Castlemaine Evening’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 28 x 15 cm
Price: $ 2,200
David Moore
No. 38 ‘In the Distance’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 36 x 14 cm
Price: $ 2,200
David Moore
No. 28 ‘Kyneton Skyline’
Medium: Oil on Linen
Size: 83 x 60 cm
Price: $ 5,500
David Moore
No. 2 ‘On the Way’
Medium: Oil on Linen
Size: 83 x 60 cm
Price: $ 5,500
SOLD David Moore
No. 3 ‘Evening Bharinghup’
Medium: Oil on Linen
Size: 102 x 62 cm
Price: $ 5,800
David Moore
No. 4 ‘Winter Evening’
Medium: Oil on Linen
Size: 56 x 46 cm
Price: $ 4,400
David Moore
No. 7 ‘Summer Shadows’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 26 x 18 cm
Price: $ 2,200
SOLD David Moore
No. 26 ‘Summer’
Medium: Oil on Linen
Size: 111 x 91 cm
Price: $ 8,500
David Moore
No. 11 ‘Malmsbury Evening’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 28 x 15 cm
Price: $ 2,000
SOLD David Moore
No. 37 ‘Broken Sky’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 36 x 16 cm
Price: $ 2,200
SOLD David Moore
No. 13 ‘Maldon Roadway’
Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Size: 28 x 13 cm
Price: $ 2,000
THE FOLLOWING ARTWORKS ARE GOUACHE PAINTINGS ON PAPER – ALL ARE FRAMED. LIMED WAXED, TASMANIAN OAK MOULDING, MUSEUM ACID FREE MATTBOARD.
David Moore
No. 41 ‘On the Way’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 42 ‘High Country’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 43 ‘Hillside Sutton Grange’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 44 ‘Cloud Study’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 45 ‘Leaden Sky’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
SOLD David Moore
No. 46 ‘Southern Storm’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
SOLD David Moore
No. 47 ‘Approaching Storm’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 48 ‘Approaching Cloud
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 49 ‘Threatening Storm’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 50 ‘Roadway Elphinstone’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
SOLD David Moore
No. 51 ‘Dusk’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
SOLD David Moore
No. 52 ‘Elphinstone Landscape’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 53 ‘Towards Geelong’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 54 ‘Hillside Harcourt’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 55 ‘Nightfall Castlemaine’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 56 ‘Against the Light’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
SOLD David Moore
No. 57 ‘Over the Brow’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 58 ‘Long Winding Road’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
SOLD David Moore
No. 59 ‘Roadway Castlemaine’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 60 ‘Mount Wallace Shade’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
David Moore
No. 61 ‘Sutton Grange Summer’
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 38 x 25 cm (image size)
Price: $ 1,850
Kareen Anchen – Gallery Director introducing Dr. Rosalind Hollinrake at the opening of David Moore’s central Victorian Landscape painting exhibition.
INTRODUCTION
Distinguished guests, one and all, Welcome to the vernissage preview of the landscape paintings of the central goldfield’s painter, David Moore.
It is with immense pleasure that I introduce you to our very special guest tonight, Dr. Rosalind Hollinrake, who will share some insights and observations with us in just a moment.
But first a little bit about Dr. Rosalind Hollinrake.
Rosalind started her early life in Auckland New Zealand as a young dancer and her compass was squarely set to study dance in Melbourne with the Borovansky ballet company. Her plans morphed and took a turn in Sydney, and then a Melbourne detour and she found herself living an altogether different arts life.
The Rosalind Humphries Galleries opened in the early 1970’s in Canterbury and what we now think of as the big names in Australian Modernist Art (Nolan, Boyd, Tucker, Whiteley, Blackman), orbited within and around Rosalind’s art world. She was there and she new these people personally.
As an early feminist who had read Russian literature at university and moved in the cultural intelligentsia in London in the late 1950s and then back in Melbourne, it seems Rosalind was well equipped to be that remarkable person where extraordinary things happened.
Of course, she is the person behind the scenes that brings others into the light. She is also a mother and we are delighted two of her daughter shave joined us here this evening. It makes sense Rosalind would be the person to discover and re-present the Clarice Beckett paintings to a sleepy, underwhelming Australian audience that needed a jolt.
The 1920’s – 1930’s painter Clarice Beckett has been Dr. Hollinrake’s opus.
She published a monograph in 1979 on Beckett and has represented and curated her paintings to gain major public attention since 1965. Her obsession with Beckett is our gain.
One to challenge the public imagination, it is no surprise Rosalind’s aim has always been to “foster and promote women artists.” It seems Beckett has been the perfect foci for Rosalind and in 2017, Rosalind was awarded her Doctorate.
A consummate researcher and truth-telling historian, Dr. Hollinrake is not too far away from manifesting over 6 decades of intimate knowledge and personal interviews about her subject the life and times and paintings of Clarice Beckett into a published biography. There are so many of us now that are awake to Clarice Beckett’s painting legacy and we relish being able to read Dr. Hollinrake’s perspective.
Speaking with Rosalind I quickly realised this woman is the exception. A magnificent memory, erudite and kind.
Rosalind has been aware of David Moore’s paintings for many moons and she is the perfect person to open this exhibition.
Please welcome….
Dr. Rosalind Hollinrake.
Copyright
No part of this material can be copied without permission from Cascade Art – All enquiries to Kareen Anchen. kareen@cascadeart.com.au
Opening address from Dr. Rosalind Hollinrake for David Moore’s exhibition at Cascade Fine Art Gallery on Saturday 1 October, 2022.
Speech notes kindly shared by Dr. Rosalind Hollinrake.
Good evening to you wonderful staunch supporters of artists and galleries. How valuable you are because you are the supporters the nurturers of Australian culture.
You are not just visitors or spectators, rather you play the all important role in keeping Australian culture alive and kicking. .
No matter how many exhibitions a professional artist has it’s always a nerve wracking experience for them. So there’s nothing more heartening than to see people genuinely taking time to stand back from their pictures to quietly experience what you as the artist have felt while painting these works.
The communication between artist and the individual viewer is a unique one. Sadly the public often miss out on that all important connection, purely because they fail to actually take the time to look and allow the image to speak to them. A genuine artist can change the viewers way of seeing the world and give it a whole new dimension and meaning. We can be so enriched by that experience. I had the complete direction of my life completely changed due to one woman artist who painted and died before I was born.
Tonight is one of those rare occasions where a symbiosis of gallery/ curator and artist has clearly occurred.
David and Kareen are both purists in intent and action, and both true professionals.
Furthermore they are both brave. Kareen for persevering with her own vision and bringing a gallery of this calibre to life in a little Victorian country town, and David for persevering with his own vision and beliefs, and his lifetime of exhibiting and baring his painterly soul to the public in an ever increasingly difficult art world.
It’s always been a world where many fine, long standing professionals Australian artists are never properly represented, purchased or celebrated in our National Galleries. A few of course get picked up but it’s becoming more and more bizarre, with teenage, year twelves are now given exhibitions and awarded prizes. Of course encourage the young. but somehow its gone over board. Soon there will be an exhibition executed by nappy swathed toddlers, and it will be titled ‘Creative toddlers pooh scapes.’ The gallery MONA in Tasmania has long celebrated the pooh making machine, so the idea of the Nappy Brigade isn’t too far fetched.
What hope does the list of really great Australian artists measured by any country in the world’s standard, have, when our galleries continue to feel forced to bring in block busters to keep up their public robots coming through in droves, in order to keep their government grants and corporate sponsorship and to show they are paying their way. The galleries have long purchased overseas artists in preference to Australian brilliance.
They became so behind with our past historical art, and they are now having to pay high prices to purchase those deceased artists as well as many of the living painters they have often ignored. Australia is]visually unique and while thankfully indigenous art is now respected and seen for its extraordinary beauty and power, it seems we fail to realise just how valuable the other vein of art, produced by those born here of European descent who have other personal and inspiring ways of seeing landscapes.
On a brighter note, seeing David’s work hung yesterday I suddenly recalled seeing an huge exhibition in Vancouver Gallery a few years ago of the artist Emily Carr’s work 1875-1941.
She was heralded in her lifetime as a National Canadian treasure and remains their heroine. She focused on landscape and went out on horseback to strike up camp to paint. She came to mind (although her work is of the Canadian landscape), because I was struck by a similar unusual energy that she engendered, an exciting dramatic energy that rings through in David’s paintings; it’s a kind of innate rawness that is the very essence of these central Victorian landscapes .
A wine takes on the flavour of the landscape soil in which the grape is grown and so too do David’s pictures. They catch the feel of the terrain, the airy atmospheric temperature, the dry yellow grasses that heightens the dark tones of trees. His compositional skill is ever evident. Whether it’s the swooping arabesque of a hill side, effortlessly balanced by a billowing cumulus cloud formation, or a vast stretch of land with a dusty road stretching or snaking into the unknown distance and big sky overhead, we can taste and smell and drink these landscapes with our eyes and they ring vividly true. We are not aware of paint or a canvas we are there with the painter and seeing them in a new way through his eyes.
Art is damned hard work, it takes years to hone skills and I truly believe that painting en plein air is absolutely the most difficult challenge of all.
Australia has always felt chip on the shoulder about its artists and overseas trends are always blindly followed. Colin Colahan a Meldrum trained artist once on returning home from working in Paris during the 1920s . After seeing the paintings of Clarice Beckett, a peer of his, who had never left Victoria, he said “who would have believed that great art could come from some quiet corner of the world.” Praise indeed from a fellow competitor.
But the comment still echoes the attitude that I believe still permeates the Australian art world.
David is a great and generous admirer of Clarice Beckett’s work and he feels he has a relationship to her – what I would suggest is that it is a cousin- like relationship, as indeed there something of her in his work.
But ultimately he offers a new landscape vision that is very much all his own.
His roads cut through the landscape and we move with them and experience that sense of not only captivated by the curious feeling of freedom that the open road brings, but of the allure of what lies beyond over the hill and this sense of wonder pulls us into the image. The whole area of Central Victoria seems crisscrossed with these marvellous country roads, rocky outcrops, big wide skies, and the extraordinary clouds. I’m a total addict of them and the ghost of past swaggies who walked this country have come to inhabit me I suspect.
David’s years of persistent observation have honed his skills to make everything appear effortless and he gets the tonal cadences and choregraphs his subject matter to the finest degree. That, Oh so difficult quality of capturing the weight of objects he brings to perfection in his clouds. He uses them to such heightened compositional effect and in capturing light as well as their weight reveals his artistic calibre.
As I have found living up here, clouds are one of the breath taking characteristic of the whole area. I can’t help reflect on the many famous artists who made their mark with clouds. The English artist Constable was famed for his cloud studies which he pursued for years. His contemporary Turner produced tumultuous watercolours of swirling snow clouds or sea storms clouds and quelled all the opposition against him to become revered as a painter.
Then there was the Baroque and Rococo Italian painter Tiepolo with his cinematic theatricality of glorious clouds swirling in fresco heavens, or the clouds in the cool still Dutch landscapes of the 17th century Jacob van Ruisdael. The French Claude Loraine was revered for his pure harmonious cloud skies and the American Thomas Cole, who was the founder of the American Hudson River school of landscape painting , claimed that clouds were ‘The soul of all landscape scenery’.
Now here our own David Moore is chasing light on dissolving dispersing or gathering clouds in the central Victorian landscape. There is a wall full of gouache in the next room where while each paining stands alone as a strong pure moment, yet again en masse together these works add to each other to form a stunning symphonic resonance. A very Beckett characteristic but with entirely different subject matter that of clouds.
David has never gone for fame or wealth he has worked like a painter should . He has always been genuinely humble and open about his work and ideas. He is so generous with his teaching and he really cares about his students. I think back to the days of the Renaissance guilds in Italy where the well know artists did likewise.
There is nothing magical about being an artist, except the joy and the solace it can bring from being in nature. Or for David in the studio bringing to life the characters of pots and bottles and vases in glorious still life assemblies. Here each object signals its own personality yet still belongs to its own tribe. There are two examples of these works in the office area that are very worthwhile taking a look at as they reveal another rich vein of his work and style.
Some people have an ability to see an incredible number of degrees of tone in one colour, usually this. Comes through years of endless observation. They learn to distinguish more and more of the finest tonal degrees and to mix them swiftly before the light changes outdoors. It is this skill which takes one closer and closer to creating that magical atmospheric reality of the moment without it ever being sterile, photographic or picturesque.
On reflection had David gone for the big time which he could have done in the eighties, he would have been up there in the high selling bracket. But he chose to stay with his own beliefs and ideals, and would rather someone who loved and responded genuinely to his work and be able to have one. This would have been his preference rather than receive a bank, or a corporate check for a fortune to paint some huge work. As we now see all too often, when the corporate disbands or de-acquisitions its collection to the auction rooms, this for t the sensitive artist is an awful experience and can be very demoralising.
I must admit though to being amazed when I read the incredibly modest prices these works here are offered for. It seems that many artists are only truly appreciated when they have returned to star dust, but for the living David, now I can only say –
The directness and power of your landscapes alert the senses, and coming into a room and looking at them is like pulling up the blind in the morning and in that instant being awakened to a wonderful new day. It would be impossible to tire of your images because they have this immediacy, they connect and remain so fresh.
Art is there to remind us of something perhaps buried in our psyche, it’s to put us in touch with our emotions and our feelings, it is there to make us wonder and to take us where perhaps we have not been before, to open our minds, and to give us succour and inspire us.
David succeeds for me on all these challenges.
And thank you, Kareen and David, for making me feel that integrity, passion and care is still present in this very strange world.
Copyright
No part of this material can be copied without permission from Cascade Art – All enquiries to Kareen Anchen. kareen@cascadeart.com.au