Dark Habitat Painting

James Moore's paintings are inspired by landscapes. Dramatic skies, open spaces and distant horizons are painted in a subtle way that focusses on the beauty of this historical genre. The works fall into different projects but they all share an underlying character. James has exhibited twice at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2018. A current series of pictures called 'Voyager' focus on the experience of looking out upon the landscape through a variety of windows. They're about the opportunity to daydream and let your mind wander into a state of deep thinking, and they use paint to try and capture the space between the interior & the exterior. Another series called 'The Tour' represents places that James has ridden through during long distance cycling trips. They seek out an emotional, memory laden connection to landscape. The paintings try to hold onto moments. The paintings are made using layers of oil paint and smooth applications of colour that are glazed over the surface to create imagery that sometimes veers towards photorealism or computer rendering, and at other times exposes the qualities of the materials. In an ongoing practice that spans over 20 years, James' works have repeatedly picked up on cues from artificial environments, such as the landscape from a video game, a theme park, or a movie still. The focus had been on depicting the contemporary media through which we see landscapes rather than the direct subject. Paintings that mimic the effects of a photograph or an image seen on a screen, yet reflect a deep-seated connection to the natural world. The landscapes are often separated from the viewer – seen through a window or on a screen. There is a sort of frustration of not being able to be out in that beauty. There’s also a fleeting movement through the landscape – the images are often related to traveling or cycling through landscapes and the short lived moments that are seen.