Joy Moore Landscapes

October -  Whispers and Florence Biennale

October has been dominated by my on line exhibition with the Whisper Gallery and the Florence Biennale. 

There has been lots of creative publicity on Instagram with the Whisper Gallery. If you click on this link it will take you to one of the posts 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUsZcjRAEK-/?utm_medium=share_sheet

They have provided lots of interesting information not just about my work but also about the artists that have influenced me over the years. The exhibition closes on 12 November so there is still time to visit the viewing room. I am in good company as the gallery has just  taken 2 Damien Hirst Prints for sale.

And so - the Biennale. I have been anticipating this since I was invited to participate in February last year. This is me having just hung my paintings and then on the opening day

It exceeded my expectations. It was a wonderful life-time experience. I met many artists from all over the world. The atmosphere was so friendly - it was like going into work every day with colleagues you have known for years. There was an incredible range of work in many disciplines and lots of events, talks, performances etc. One of the most memorable was an installation by Michelangelo Pistoletti (who was awarded  the Lorenzo il Magnifico Prize for a life time's contribution to art)  Small square canvases with paintings of the flags of all the countries in the world were placed by Michelangelo and all of us artists on a framework  in a figure of 8. It was a wonderful unifying feeling and illustrated the overall feeling of the Biennale - peace and caring for the environment.  We then all signed our names on the boxes where the paintings were originally stacked.

Vivienne Westwood was there to receive The Leonardo Da Vinci award for a life time contribution to fashion and the environment - she gave an interesting contribution to a round table discussion about art and the environment, although as it was conducted in Italian, language proved to be a barrier!

I must also add that the organisers were wonderful - so friendly and helpful. The space and the exhibits were so well done especially, as due to Covid issues, they did not know until the last minute if they were going to be allowed to open or not.

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And the brilliant outcome for me was that I was approached by  gallery owners from Florence and Milan and I have just signed a contract to exhibit with the Milan gallery in January next year.

And so closer to home. Earlier in the month I installed 6 works on paper (studies for my mountain series)  at the Portico Restaurant in Caselle, Turin. Here are 3 of them.

Work wise I have not had a lot of time in the studio - besides taking time out for the Biennale I took several days to completely reorganise my studio - it's much more ordered now and thanks to IKEA I have a proper desk and chair which makes things like writing this much more comfortable. Most of the work I have done has been on my mountain series - which has just been depleted - see below. 

This month has been excellent  for sales. I sold two earlier paintings to one client - this is one of them - a favourite of mine for a while and I am very happy it is going to a good home.

A local landscape - Montiglio has gone to a friend

Four mountain paintings have just gone to one  client the two on the right were practically  hot off the easel

So it really has been a splendid month for me.

The recent weather seems to be celebrating that - we have had the most glorious sunny autumn days with stunning colours all over the countryside - the trees and the vineyards are bursting with colour, so I have taken a day or two off of mountains to record my feelings  - here are a few of my experiments - not sure where they will go but I just had to make some kind of response to nature. 

After all that’s my job! 

Enjoy, and see you next month.

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Remember to follow me on Instagram JoyElaineMore and on Facebook - Joy Moore Artist. 

September - Exhibitions and More Mountains

Welcome to my September newsletter - and especially to my new subscribers. September has seen the beginning of a return to normality in terms of exhibiting. I had a really good weekend exhibiting during the Coccowine festival at the beginning of the month along with two other local artists - we drew quite crowd and our varied disciplines made a really interesting show for a range of visitors. It is a good outlook for the future of our CoccoArt project. I showed quite a few new paintings  - mountains and landscape. My larger paintings of the Apuane mountains continue to be the favourites - although they are still in my possession! However I was really happy to have  sold 4 other paintings - shown here.

Allora Prendo Tutto in un Occhiata, la Campagna

Tramonte Monferrato

Campi Arati d'Oro

Villa San Secondo dal Valle Versa 

Over the same weekend I received messages for the Californian based Saatchi-on-line gallery to say that they had sold two paintings on my behalf - both seascapes - one now shipped to the States and the other to the UK. 

Beach Near Oban, Scotland

Looking for Odysseus 2

From the 12th October to the 12th November the London based Whisper Gallery will be showing 10 of my paintings in an on-line exhibition.-“The Poetry of Landscape” click here to visit https://bit.ly/poetryoflandscape

For my Italian subscribers I shall be changing my permanent exhibition at the Ristorante sul Lago di Codana this week and will be installing a range of abstract flower based paintings - here is a little taster.

Rose Petals

Pink Profusion

Piemonte Wild Flowers, Spring

Thanks to a contact in a business group I belong  to (BNI Global) I shall be installing a small show in the Il Portico Ristorante in the historic centre of  Caselle Torinese later this month.

My major exhibiting activity this month is my participation in the Florence Biennale - 23rd to 30th October. I have already heard from a fellow artist in France that she is taking part so I look forward to seeing her and meeting many more interesting people.

Last but not least, this month I have embarked on a 6 week course with Louise Fletcher (Yorkshire based artist) The course focuses on the issues of working in a series - which is the way I always work , so very useful to see how others approach this. I have been involved in a lot of admin this month - so have not had much time in the studio other than following this course. I am continuing with my  mountain theme during the course. I am aiming to express the feeling of being right up close in the mountains - to experience the weather ,the light and the fabric of the mountains. The work is  very experimental at this stage, so here are just 3  of the works in progress that I am willing share at this point!.

Remember to follow me on Instagram- account name - JoyElaineMore and on Facebook - page name -Joy Moore Artist.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have enjoyed it.

July and August - Amazing Mountains

Again I am writing a double newsletter for July and August. July was very busy and then I went off to the Dolomites for a couple of weeks. So here’s what I have been up to.

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I usually have some paintings on show in the restaurant at the Lago di Codana in Montiglio (not far from my home) and during July the owners commissioned a photo shoot to promote the restaurant and it’s gardens as a wedding venue. They have formed a partnership of people involved in the wedding business and asked me to join the partnership and to keep the restaurant full of my paintings.  So there was a lot of selecting and framing, and there are now 23 of my works on paper and on canvas hanging there. It acts as a gallery for my work as  besides being seen by all visitors to the restaurant I can take clients there to see my work. 

I hung some new paintings in the Cantina of Giorgio Dogliotti in Castagnole delle Lanze and immediately sold one of the ones I took down -  Shows it is good to change the paintings every now and them!

Here’s the one I sold  (to an architect)  - It’s an impression of the old docks in Hamburg - nothing to do with wine but it went well with the stressed black and grey walls.

I spent two weeks in the amazing Dolomites . They are just the most breathtaking mountains - I don’t know if they are unique but they are exceptional - so different from the Alps near me in the north west of Italy. I made lots of sketches and took loads of photos and made a start on sketches and paintings as soon as I got back to the studio. I am really hooked on acrylic inks and have been working with them on both paper and canvas - the way they run into each other and the way they stain the canvas is fabulous. In the end I find that  I need to use paint as well on the canvases.  I am trying to work in an experimental way - always aiming to portray my emotional response to the mountains rather than the view but some paintings just seem to want to go their own way - more towards the figurative. But I have also been using cropping in the way I learned from the Lewis Noble course earlier this year, to hone in on the pictorial aspects that I like and reject the parts that don’t work.

Here are some of the sketches drawings and paintings

Drawings made in situ.

Three of the paintings that I think are finished. The one on the far left is my favourite - it is mostly inks with some black and white acrylic paint.

Some cropped details - my favourite bits

Working things out and nice little strips saved from my cropping where you can find  lovely unplanned effects.

I think this subject is going to keep me going for a long time.

Exhibition opportunities are beginning to pick up again. Next weekend Cocconato will host the annual  wine festival  “Coccowine” and I will be exhibiting  some work in the town’s communal hall. It is the one time of the year when we have have hundreds of visitors and is always a good opportunity to expand my clientele. For anyone in the area we will be open on Saturday the 4th from 17.00 to 24.00 and on Sunday the 5th from 15.00 to 20.00.

I am really pleased to say that the Whisper Gallery based in the UK will be hosting a virtual exhibition of 10 of my paintings from 12 October to 12 November. The theme is the poetry of landscape. There will be a private view and I will tell you more about the event next month.

April and May 2021 - Irises

Well it is now June and as I have started to write this newsletter for May I realise that I have not written one for April. I can’t believe how the time has flown. But I think it might be because of what I have been concentrating on - working on paintings for the Florence Biennale in October this year. Further to what I wrote in the March newsletter I found that I did need to have all the paintings I wish to exhibit ready by early May - although the Biennale office very kindly extended the deadline for me. Anyway that is what I have been totally absorbed in. 

I am going to exhibit 2 paintings both 80 x 80 cms - these two - Red Iris and Blue Iris.

Red Iris, Messenger of the Ancient Greek Gods

Blue  Iris, Messenger of the Ancient Greek Gods

It has been quite a struggle to get here. I started with the red one which was heavily dependant on washes of acrylic paint blending together. I started by mixing various reds and orange acrylic paint and dropping it onto canvas that I had partially sprayed with water. Then I sprayed more water into the paint to move it around the canvas and to make the colours mix. I left it  to dry overnight and repeated the process a number of times. I then painted in areas with a brush - to darken colours or to draw into some areas and to basically adjust the composition and balance of the painting. I was really pleased with the result. Meantime I started on a yellow one which went in a completely different direction - see below. Then I started on the blue one but could not get a satisfactory result - I almost had a decent picture at one stage but I completely messed it up trying to “improve” it. So I bought a new canvas and started again and eventually got a result that I liked and would go well alongside the red iris. 

I should say that I started off by planning to have three canvases, each 80 x40 cms of purple, red and blue iris - the purple one I I already had  - see the March newsletter. BUT the best laid plans of mice and men (and artists) don’t always work out do they.

However I did  complete the other large blue canvas and the smaller one - so here they are alongside the yellow one. I now like them all. But my favourites are the red and blue ones I shall be exhibiting

I belong to a group of artists called Art Tribe which is run by Louise Fletcher an artist based in Yorkshire. She has a fabulous site with lots of regular and interesting content. She asks members to make videos of their work/studios to put on the site. Well I made one in May and I was absolutely overwhelmed by the many very kind responses that I got.  Since then my Instagram account has got a lot more followers and many new people have signed up to this newsletter - so a very warm welcome to all of my fellow Art Tribers. So I am thinking of putting the video on my facebook page - but it needs a bit of editing first. I will let you all know when it goes out.

I am also now a member of a group of artists in Turin called GoArtFactory and we will be having our first exhibition since the beginning of lockdown last year in the Baloon area of Turin - along Via Borgo Dora all day on 13th June. I shall be exhibiting a range of smaller works. 

Also on 26th June there will be a “Romantic Dinner” at Cocconato to celebrate us being in the top 10 Borgo dei Borghi in Italy. The theme is L’Amore Per L’Arte and there will be an exhibition of art along via Roma - I will be taking part in that so I hope to see you in Turin and/or Cocconato.

After having tidied up my studio I will be getting back to my mountain paintings and maybe some more flowers (not irises) now that they are all blooming my garden. Also I want to pick up on the work I was doing on the Lewis Noble course in March. Here are a few of the first cropped black and white drawings I made.  For now  I feel that the pressure is off!!

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I loved playing with the quality of wet compressed charcoal

During may we had two Sundays of painting in the vineyards of Cocconato - one at Maciot Vineyard and one at Nicola Vineyard. It was organised by our Tourist office. People of all ages came to paint the vineyards or the views from them and I was there to help people with their paintings  and offer advice. Both sessions were very enjoyable and we shall be doing one more in September.

One last thing - it was my birthday in May - a  big one- here I am starting the celebrations with husband Ken having lunch at Lago Viverone.

Cheers !

June - Begonias, Street Exhibitions and  Mountain Trips

After putting the Irises to bed in May I was unable to resist the call of my beautiful begonias - it was a busy month working in my courtyard garden and my main garden which is frighteningly big and every time I passed by the yellow and orange begonias they were saying "paint me, paint me" so I did. At first I went complexity abstract using quite a lot of transferred marks but I wasn't getting the feel of the profusion of colour and growth so I changed tack and produced these four acrylics (on paper) which although not figurative are more suggestive of begonias.  All are for sale at €90 plus shipping. Please contact me on the contact page if you are interested.

Begonia Gialla e Arancia  28 x 20 cms

Begonia Gialla  28 x 20 cms

I joined with other members of my new group GoArtFactory to exhibit some work in streets of the Gran Balon area of Turin, famous for its flea market. It is an amazing place absolutely bustling - I know it doesn't look like it in these pictures but I had to wait for a space so that you can see the exhibition! The mountain paintings went down well - someone asked the price of one as I was hanging it. (Unfortunately they didn't like the price!)

Profusione di Begonia  28 x 20 cms

Begonia con Verde 28 x 20 cms

The L'Amore per l'Arte fair at Cocconato was lovely - we are a quiet town and generally you don't see many people in the afternoon but we had quite a few visitors and a number of guest artists. Some of my friends on Facebook came all the way from Biella to see it- thank you so much. I hope it is the start of my project to promote art in Cocconato - to have an atelier for guest exhibitions and an annual art fair. More on this next month I hope.

At the beginning of June all of Italy became a "white zone" with regard to Covid restrictions which meant that we could travel freely. So I immediately organised two little breaks in the mountains. We went to two gorgeous valleys in the mountains around Cuneo. The first was to Val Maira where I hadn't been before and is now my favourite mountain valley. We went in my husband's three wheeler open top car (home made) which is fabulous for communing with the mountain air, light and beauty in comfort. The second trip was to Limone which is also amazing. I managed to get some sketching done - I deliberately  took a small range of materials to focus better. I have yet to do anything with the sketches but they will all be fodder for some larger canvases soon. I will also be travelling over to the Dolomites later this month so from late August I plan to start a significant series of mountain paintings .

And finally - in July there will be an event with my business group (Business Network International) at Giorgio Dogliotti's Cantina  so I thought I would hang some new paintings there. I have returned to some that I started before I did Louise Fletcher's course last year. They are generic landscapes of the area around Giorgio's vineyards. They were in oil - so I had to carry on with the same media which I haven't used in over a year - except for one commission last winter. I really enjoyed getting back into the lushness of oil paint and was surprised at how much more freely I used the paint. Also my colour palette seems to have changed. Anyway here are two which I think are finished.

March 2021 Mountains and Flowers

During March I have continued experimenting with inks, gesso and acrylics. I was happy with the very free charcoal and ink sketches I made last year in the Appuan Alps - so I started with a large sheet of gorgeous 300lb watercolour paper taped up into four squares and started paint freely without looking very much at my reference material and was pleased with the results - I really like the blues with the orange and sepia. 

I then went onto two largish canvases (70 x 50 cms) using inks with gesso and black and blue acrylic, which I enjoyed as somehow I seem to be able to work more freely than I had been doing with my landscapes.

At one stage I put a sepia ink over most of the canvas but realised it looked too hot so I toned it down and put a  coat of semi transparent gesso over it.  I used palette knives, scrapers and brushes and ended up with some lovely textures - which unfortunately don’t show up well in photographs. 

March has been beautifully sunny here and there have been fabulous views of both Monte Bianco and Monviso so I have been working on some ideas based on sketches and photographs that I took. These still need some work. 

Apuane Mountain Images. Mixed media on paper approximately 28 x 38 cms

Apuane Mountains.

Mixed media on canvas

50 x 70 cms

But the mountains now will have to wait a while  - I am exhibiting at the Florence Biennale in October and have been thinking that I have plenty of time to decide on my subject matter and develop some paintings. However I took a quick look back at the regulations  and saw that I must provide an image of a painting for the catalogue by mid May and that this painting must be exhibited at the Biennale. As the theme of the Biennale is “Concepts of femininity in Contemporary Art and Design” I have chosen a floral theme - based on the Iris. The ancient Greek goddess Iris was the messenger of the gods and the personification of the rainbow and acted as the the link between heaven and earth. Through history the meaning of the iris has come to include faith, hope and wisdom. In our world today we need faith hope and wisdom more than ever before and the feminine symbol/personification of the rainbow is a powerful concept of femininity.  I have one painting in my collection that is inspired by the iris which I may use - depending how the others develop.

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At the same time I have just started a three week on line course with Lewis Noble which is helping considerably with issues of composition.  More on this next month.

Purple Iris. Acrylic on canvas 40 x 80 cms