Neil Moore was born in 1950 in Oxford, UK, of Australian parents. He was educated in Melbourne and Canberra, his chief interests from an early age being art and ancient history. In 1972 he completed an Honours Degree in Fine Arts at the University of Sydney, taking up a teaching position there in 1974. He left four years later, first to indulge a passion for rebuilding old motorcycles and then to pick up the threads of practical art which he had abandoned shortly after starting university
In 1979 he began doing black and white drawings for Australian newspapers, winning a Walkley award in 1980. The same year he made his first trip overseas, working for British publications and beginning his travels in Europe.
For the next 8 years he moved backwards and forwards between Australia and Europe, increasingly fascinated first by France and then Italy. He supported himself drawing for newspapers and magazines, and illustrating books. Having learnt to draw while working as an illustrator – he never went to art school - he began in 1982 a career as a fine artist, becoming quickly immersed in the medium of etching. In 1984 he spent time at the Citè des Arts in Paris, and then in Berlin. In this period he exhibited in France, England, Germany and Italy, and completed his illustrated children’s book The Voyage of Naram-Sin.
In 1988 he moved permanently to Italy, establishing himself with his young family in a remote hilltop town in Umbria not far from Spoleto where he began to paint in oils, supporting himself working for Italian publishers. Having taken two years off to restore a medieval ruin which is now the family home, he currently divides his time between painting and working with his wife Carol on their highly acclaimed Living Italy programs, introducing the art, history and daily life of Italy to the thinking traveller. They have three children.
In 1979 he began doing black and white drawings for Australian newspapers, winning a Walkley award in 1980. The same year he made his first trip overseas, working for British publications and beginning his travels in Europe.
For the next 8 years he moved backwards and forwards between Australia and Europe, increasingly fascinated first by France and then Italy. He supported himself drawing for newspapers and magazines, and illustrating books. Having learnt to draw while working as an illustrator – he never went to art school - he began in 1982 a career as a fine artist, becoming quickly immersed in the medium of etching. In 1984 he spent time at the Citè des Arts in Paris, and then in Berlin. In this period he exhibited in France, England, Germany and Italy, and completed his illustrated children’s book The Voyage of Naram-Sin.
In 1988 he moved permanently to Italy, establishing himself with his young family in a remote hilltop town in Umbria not far from Spoleto where he began to paint in oils, supporting himself working for Italian publishers. Having taken two years off to restore a medieval ruin which is now the family home, he currently divides his time between painting and working with his wife Carol on their highly acclaimed Living Italy programs, introducing the art, history and daily life of Italy to the thinking traveller. They have three children.
Neil Moore began painting seriously in 1989, shortly after his arrival in Italy. From the start his work showed a commitment to a European tradition but interpreted with a freedom and an appreciation of the contemporary that locate them firmly in the present. The high technical level works to establish the credibility of imagery that blends themes taken from history and mythology with preoccupations, even obsessions, of an often highly personal nature. The artist’s debt to Surrealism is clear, but his command of the representational capacity of oil paint and love for the fall of light link him to older and more subtle antecedents.
In particular, his play on the proportions of male and female bodies and the related distortion of perspective and pictorial space have allowed him to establish a kind of private world in which references to the past and an acute eye for the details of the present are fused into images of refinement and power. While the delight that he takes in the simple depiction of things is everywhere apparent, the human body is at the centre of Neil’s work, rigorously investigated but also sensuously evoked. The surface realism in these paintings is a vehicle for themes that are both compelling and disturbing, worked into images of strange power and compelling beauty.
The discipline intrinsic to portrait painting has been congenial to Neil. His first oil paintings were portraits, and an early one like that of journalist Brian Toohey, acquired by the Australian National Portrait Collection, already makes clear his ability to draw on modern sources while at the same time establishing a range of references to great painting of the past. The subjects are accurately depicted but at the same time they go well beyond the possibilities of photography in their painterly qualities and subtly calculated compositions. Seen in the original these portraits have commanding presence, catching with rare precision the character of their subjects. His work is in public and private collections and he has been three times a finalist in Australia’s Moran prize for portraiture.
Neil began his artistic career with etching, and until he moved to Italy in 1988 this was his principal form of expression. The tower images in particular are from this earlier period, and other themes that are later explored in his painting such as the legend of Icarus make their first appearance here. He has continued to produce plates since then, however, using this demanding but beautiful medium in counterpoint to his work in oils. With just a few exceptions his plates have all been made using copper prepared with a conventional hard ground and etched in ferric perchloride acid.
Neil has always done his own printing, apart from the illustrations to The Marionette Theatre (1984) and The Epic of Prince Igor (1988) which appeared in limited edition books.
Prior to moving to Italy in 1988, and then in parallel with his fine art, Neil has had a career in the world of newspaper and book illustration, winning a Walkley award for Australian journalism in 1980 and a Walkley nomination in 2005. His work has appeared extensively in the Australian press, while in Italy he has collaborated with major newspapers, magazines and publishing houses. This section will showcase a small selection of that work, including the book for children that he wrote and illustrated in 1988, “The voyage of Naram-Sin”.
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