On the Road - Jay Moore

At 38 years of age, Jay Moore still sees the world like a young boy setting off on his first camping trip. Wide eyed and eager, Moore travels the back roads of Colorado these days looking not for the perfect fishing hole but for the perfect painting. The 6’4” lanky artist travels lightly, knowing that as soon as he heads off the beaten path he’ll have to tend to easel, paints, brushes and turpentine – he doesn’t need much more than that. Besides, anything else would just slow his progress. He does, however, keep a fishing rod in his SUV, just in case.

Moore grew-up in the Colorado foothills neighborhood of Evergreen. An idyllic childhood, his days were filled with hiking and getting lost in the woods, climbing trees and making forts. He said, “Those carefree days are experiences I draw upon today. They do affect my painting.” Marrying his passion and knowledge of the wilderness with his art, however, wasn’t something that happened overnight.

After graduating from the Colorado Institute of Art in Denver, Moore embarked on a decade long successful career in illustration. But the confines of a studio and the lack of freedom to paint what most inspired him, kept nagging the artist. He started taking days off to paint outside and took a few workshops. Years of constant plein air work helped him beautifully develop his style, yet he still felt the need to refine his technique. He sought out one of the best: Wilson Hurley. “It wasn’t that he said you need to make this bigger, this small, that lighter, this darker -- we talked about deep art theories and concepts. It wasn’t about how to paint specific things, it was how to build a sound painting regardless of subject matter.”

Today, after more than 12 years of painting on location, Moore is a no stranger to the rigors the job. Well studied, he has hundreds of art books and literary works on artists he has found inspiring, artists like Isaac Levitan, Worthington Whittredge, Willard Metcalf, and Ivan Shishkin. And, in the tradition of Alfred Jacob Miller, Charles M. Russell, and Maynard Dixon, Moore, too, keeps a written record of the places he paints. But unlike those artists of the past, Moore also uses a global positioning system (GPS) to keep track of where he’s been. A large map in his studio displays pins for each local that has called him to stop and capture its beauty. His journals, like his on-the-spot paintings, are where he spills out his heart; they attest to his deep affection for the land.

Come along with us as we travel vicariously on two trips Jay Moore made over the last year. The first trip in the dead of winter takes us to Western Colorado along the Eagle River as we follow Moore on his race to catch the break of dawn and then for big adventures in Alaska.

Monday, February 11, 2002 

Up at usual predawn hour and out the door of the Comfort Inn by 6:30. Coldddd. Not sure of any destination, just started driving. Saw landmark of New York Mountain and decided to go for it.

Moore had left the night before from his home in Parker, Colorado. It’s always hard to leave his wife and two young sons, but the need for fresh subject matter and new inspiration drives him on. Winter in Colorado’s high country is especially tempting for its stark contrast of snow fields and evergreens, barren rock and dormant trees. This trip took him three hours due west to the Eagle River.

Must be near 0° as I can tell by consistency of paint – stiff and stringy – so you need to mix it with turp(entine) just to get it to go onto the canvas. The problem now is even paint mixed with a lot of thinner will not dry. I went to paint the delicate ridges of the peak just kissed with light and the thicker white color just slides off. It will not stick. I tried with a palette knife and could only make scrapes. I remember saying to myself, “Houston, we have a problem”.

When Moore paints outside in the winter months, he dresses much like an Iditarod racer: long underwear union suit, turtle neck, flannel shirt, polar fleece jacket all under Cabela’s Trans-Alaska suit, fleece hat, Windstopper fingerless gloves. But, even with his body warm, there isn’t always much he can do about his hands.

First (my hands) feel just cold, then stiff, then achy, then pain sets in and you dance crouched over making fists and stuffing them inside your jacket. This only happens in single digit temperatures when you cannot even button a button and reaching into a pocket for your keys causes your face to twist in pain.

Finally, the sun did warm enough so he could finish a small painting before moving on. This particular trip was about painting water so he continued along the Eagle River until he found a solid place to park on the side of the road. He recalled, “…pullouts hard to come by in winter and dangerous to test shoulder snow. One time thought packed snow solid and suddenly my 4WD was at a 45° angle in the ditch.” Moore grabbed his painting gear and headed down a steep bank to the river’s edge, noticing how the ice in varying thicknesses rimmed the water in a serpentine pattern.

Found just  the right spot right next to the open water. The fisherman in me peered into the rushing current at the  edge of the ice by my feet not really expecting to see him but there he was – the grey green back of a Rainbow Trout maybe 11-12”. He slid back under the ledge and I felt blessed like a gift in his appearing for me for that moment.

He painted that scene and a few others, concluding with an image of the river at dusk, the pinkish wintry hues glowing off the rushing water.

Tuesday February 12, 2002

Out the door of motel by 6:15 in the half light of predawn, knowing I only have a few minutes to decide my location to get set up to catch the first light. I decide to play it safe and go for another painting of New York Mountain. Except this time closer up. Found a long driveway to a house that put me in the right position. Afraid to ring the bell, I just set up about 200 yards away from their house and got to painting. The mountain was beautifully revealed by the creeping light of early morning. I hardly noticed the pain in my fingertips from the 5° temperature. Two horses grazed in the foreground posed perfectly to give the mountain scale.

From there Moore drove down to the Eagle River again and ended up 20 yards from where he painted the day before. This time, however, deciding the better view was on the river.

Yes ‘on’ the river. The best vantage point was on the ice. I crept out as far as I dare and set up my easel trying to act calm about the water rushing behind me. I calculated where the ice would probably break off if it should decide to do so. During the midday heat the ice was calving-off all the time. Sure enough with about 15 minutes left on the painting a big CRACK! 4 inches behind me the ice fell away and I lost my concentration for a couple of minutes as water now rushed at my heels. Kind of proud of myself for figuring so accurately.

Wednesday, February 13, 2002

Up before dawn, Moore drove to the White River, where upon arriving, he wrote:

Never been up here in the winter and this morning the valley looks like a scene from Dr. Zhivago: white, everything white-white with hoar frost. The river steaming like a hot springs. Chunks of ice, no, more like slush, flowing in the river. Think it too strange to paint.

With limited access to the river, Moore decided to scope out the view from the bridge where he spotted another rainbow trout, this time some 18 inches long. He finally found a spot with the sun catching the white willows and dark shadows of the trees as a backdrop. Afterwards, Moore painted one more small canvas, then, feeling tired but satisfied, he started on the four hour trip home.

Moore tries to take one big trip a year. This year was Alaska. Moore and his brother, Dan, and Dan’s son, Tyler, set off from Anchorage on an 11 days excursion in a rented RV.

Wednesday May 15, 2002 – Alaska!

Up at 3:30 to get to the airport at 5:00 for a 7:00 AM  flight to anchorage. Arrived at Anchorage at 12:30 to steady drizzle.

The next day, hearing that the weather was sunnier to the south, they set off. Moore wrote later: No real plan or schedule. Abruptly pulled along the Seward Hwy  at McHugh Creek. I ambled across the train tracks along turn-again arm and set up on large rocks to paint water and mnts. First painting a little rusty – just getting warmed up.

Over the next week, while Moore painted throughout the long days of near constant sunlight, his brother and nephew explored, hiked, fished, and photographed the countryside. Moore’s journal details the sights and sounds of the vast open space:

Set up on a steep hillside and listened to the loons below. The sun set finally at about 10:00 PM. Then the snow capped mountains at the opposite side of the valley turned pink so I threw a 9x12 canvas on the easel and raced trying to capture the colors as they ran away from me. Mosquitoes especially bothersome as sun went down.

The trip took them from Anchorage south to Homer along the Cook Inlet, where Moore constantly found amazing sites to paint. He pushed himself to wake long before the others and to continue painting late into the still light nights. He adopted the saying, I’ll sleep when I get home.

Moore discovered that Alaska is, in more ways than one, a painter’s paradise: One thing surreal about Alaska is – no barbed wire fences! You can roam as you please. And: It only took about 10 minutes to find another spot to paint along the road. A nice river with snowcapped peaks behind. The scale is hard to comprehend. Just before us is a mountain with a north face (now in shadow) of a 3,000 ft. drop. In Colorado this would be an icon – here it blends in like ridges on a potato chip.

On Saturday, May 18 as they drove toward Homer, Moore spotted the two volcanoes, Redoubt and Iliamna, rising 10,000 feet from sea level. The soft peach colored, conical masses reflected in the water across the Cook Inlet. Tired of driving and anxious to paint, Moore pulled off and searched out a site. He found a place just beyond a posted “No Trespassing” sign. Against his better judgment, he decided to proceed. Not more than 10 minutes into the work, a voice shouted from below, “What are you doing?” Moore wrote: I cupped my hands to my face and shouted, “Painting... I’m an artist.” She responded, “Okay, show me when you are done.” Phew!! She could have been trouble. Thankfully she too is an artist. She showed Moore her pastels and photographs of one of the volcanoes erupting back in the 1990’s.

Arriving in Homer later that day, Moore was taken by the float planes parked in Beluga Bay. He wrote: Tired of painting snow capped peaks, I wanted to paint a plane. Only vantage point was along guard rail of hwy into town. Cars zipping by 6’ away, some honking.

From Homer, they drove more than 500 miles north to Denali in hopes of a chance to paint Mt. McKinley. By Sunday, May 19, close to midnight while looking for a place to park for the night, they spotted McKinley. The sheer excitement of that moment reinvigorate Moore. Within minutes of parking, he was at his easel painting. He finished his first canvas at 12:45 AM. Three hours later he was up and out again painting the mountain in the dawn. This was the apex of Moore’s trip, his main reason for going to Alaska.

Travel guide books all reported that tourists can expect to see Mt. McKinley only one out of eight days. Because it rises more than 20,000 feet, it is often shrouded in clouds. In front of the great peak, they realized their good fortune at nine full days of sunshine in Alaska. Moore did many paintings of McKinley from the same spot as the light changed, much like Claude Monet had painted haystacks at all times of the day. After three days and six paintings of the mountain, Moore was ready to press on.

Though on Thursday, May 23,  they were feeling the pressure to get back to Anchorage for the flight home, they continued on to Valdez. Moore observed in his journal:

Stopped at Wrangell Mountains too good to pass up even a time crunch. Decided to press on to Valdez. Overcast. Looked around docks but uninspired. Poked around shops. Had delicious halibut dinner and back down road to paint Bridal Veil Falls --  no, I mean Horse Tail Falls. Finished painting 10:45 PM. Tyler climbed to top of Falls. Could see his flashbulb of his camera go off 200’ above. On down the road to get closer to Anchorage. Drove until midnight and found beautiful campground off Hwy next to a pond. Moon reflecting into it.

On Friday, May 24, 2002, Moore concluded the trip in these words: Pretty much a drive and pack day. 10PM flight home. I got the middle seat so -- “I’ll sleep when I get home…”

Jay Moore shows with Saks Gallery in Denver, CO; Patrick Jolly Fine Art, Denver, CO; Keating Fine Art, Basalt, CO; and Valley Fine Art, Aspen, CO. His work can be seen online at jaymoorestudio.com.

This is the unedited version of the article that appeared in Southwest Art Magazine.