J. Moore: Experimenting In Texas
by EAM Staff

EAM: How did you get into art? Did you go to school for it?

JM: I have been drawing since I was a little kid, cartoons,
comics, pencil sketches on whatever I could find to draw with and on. My parents thought I was a prodigy, but the “real art world” scared me, so I immersed myself into the sub-culture in the shadows of DFW ie Tattoo art etc. I do have a degree from Texas Christian University, but it is not in Art. When my Father passed away, I began to paint maniacally as a form of grief therapy. I seemed to only be able to express my feelings of loss through my paintings.

EAM: You paint in acrylic and oil, which medium did you start working with first? What do you like about working in both mediums?

JM: I started out with oil paints since that was what I thought an artist would normally use and the oil paint is slow to dry, therefore I had plenty of time to work it (to my detriment at times, not knowing when to stop). Then I discovered acrylic and it allowed me to express in a frenzy, if that was my day, and set up fast so I could move on to the next images swirling around in my head.

EAM: Your styles across the board really seem to vary, what are your influences?

JM: Whatever is going on in my life at the moment is my influence for art. Some days I think the impressionist painters are the most sheer genius expression of art there could possibly be…but the next day a realist landscape or a still life makes me feel calm and humble, wanting to give that gift to someone else.

EAM: Tell us how you got your start in mixed media sculpture.

JM: Mixed media came as an accident. I broke a piece of tempered glass (I was going to give my Mom a pretty glass top table, got in a hurry, Mom never got the table) I swept up the glass and thought “this is too cool to throw away”, so I didn’t! The delicate glass combined with heavy chain and metal just spoke to me, so off I went in another direction.

EAM: Have you shown your work in any art galleries before? If so when/where? Have you come up against any resistance from galleries to show your work?

JM: I have shown in a few galleries in Austin, Fredericksburg, Fort Worth and was invited to take part in a showing at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas. I have had some commissioned pieces, which I enjoy doing because I get to meet the client as opposed to gallery sales which, although very nice, does not give me the same satisfaction as knowing where my works are residing. I have gifted many pieces which gives me a great feeling as well.

EAM: Have you used social networking at all to market your art?

JM: No. But I do have a website which I take really good care of at times and at other times, well not so much! I need to be more disciplined in that area, but hey, I’m an artist. I have all those inner voices to listen to and all that art to work on.