Meet Andy Moses | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Andy Moses and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Andy, why did you pursue a creative career?
It was a little bit of a journey getting there. I think I have always been on some kind of search or quest. Growing up my Father Ed Moses was a well know abstract painter but discouraged me and my Brother from doing the same. Like most parents he wanted us to be a Doctor, Lawyer, or go into business. I surfed a lot as a teenager and it had a huge influence on my psyche. I figured I would move to Hawaii and be a board shaper. After that maybe write novels. I always read a lot as a teenager. I wanted to really live first though. My last year in high school I had a severe ear and sinus infection and the doctor said I couldn’t go in the water for a year so I decided to apply for film School. I ended up being accepted into the art department at Cal Arts but they told me I could study film as well. Within just a few months of being there I found the art department more interesting. The teachers and other students got me thinking in new and innovative ways. In my second year I started working with a lot of experimental painting techniques that I mostly invented myself. I wanted to make something that I had never seen before. I had always been influenced by the ocean as well as astronomical and geological events. I knew I wanted to represent the natural world, but in a way that captured it in motion and changing and shifting rather than something static. I wanted to capture aspects of nature across different scales as well. After just two years I moved to New York and was making paintings between working different jobs. My first job was working as an assistant for artist Pat Steir. I loved working for Pat and she was an amazing painter. Later I had my first solo exhibition in 1987 at Annina Nosei gallery and I have been painting and exhibiting my work ever since.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My work comes from a deep inward place. I want to really take the viewer on a journey. As I said before I think I have been on a journey my entire life. I just turned sixty this year so it’s been a long path but I think I am learning new things every day especially in the studio.

I grew up by the ocean and I grew up surfing. The house that I lived in from the time that I was 3 to 18 years old was on a bluff overlooking the ocean. I used to walk to that bluff every evening and watch the sunset. I wasn’t alone though. It was a great communal hang out spot for a lot of the locals that lived in the canyon. My next door neighbor Steve Johns another painter hung out there a lot as well. Later in New York I had a similar setup up on bluff overlooking the ocean. It was in Montauk Long Island on Peter Beard’s amazing property where I sometimes used to stay.

There was something about that ritual of looking towards the changing light over the ocean that imprinted that view in my mind. That endless horizon and that infinite space opened up my mind to the metaphysical and to the sublime. There was also the experience of surfing that when you are moving down the line on a wave, the water is also constantly moving, and the colors are constantly shifting. You have vantage points in the water that you don’t have on land. Everything is in motion. There was something about that sensation of motion that also got imprinted in my mind.

Those were some of the early influences and still are. but so are thousands of great paintings I have seen over the last forty years both contemporary and historical. I go to gallery and Museum shows in L.A. and all over the world when I travel.

Those are some of my inspirations but I still have to get into the studio every day and work things out. My work involves a lot of experimentation. When I find techniques that work for me, where my ideas and visions are coming to life, then I will work with them for a couple of years or maybe a couple of decades. I go as far as I can. I keep producing a body or bodies of work. When I am temporarily satiated then I experiment some more. Its an endless obsessive cycle. It will definitely keep me very involved and deeply entrenched for the rest off this life.

My work comes through the discovery of what I can make collaborating with nature and natural forces. I am a painter though so my work manifests as paintings. I want to have an encounter with the physical that leads me to the metaphysical. When working on a painting I want to be very tuned into the whole cosmos. When it’s done I want the viewer to have the same experience looking at it.

The one challenging lesson that I have learned is to keep moving forward no matter what. Sometimes people will love your work and sometimes people will hate it. You have to keep working and moving forward regardless of what people think. You have to have deep faith and belief in what you are doing and keep doing it. It’s definitely not for everyone. If you love doing it I know of nothing better in the world to do.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would start in my studio. I would want them to see my paintings so they have a lens into my world. Next we would drive north on Pacific coast highway from where you come though the tunnel off the 10 freeway until the road bends towards Oxnard. I think the stretch of coast on PCH is pure magic. There are too many spots to name but we would definitely stop on the bluff by point Dume and hit the sea caves by Leo Carrillo. Afterwards we would drive back on Mulholland so we could see the magical mountains we have right here. We would take a hike in one of the parks and stop at the Frederic R Weisman museum in Malibu.

After that I would take them first to my favorite gallery exhibitions and then to the Museums. We would definitely to go to the Broad, The Getty, LACMA, MOCA, and some smaller museums and collections like the Frederic R. Weisman Foundation. I would also take them on a day trip to Laguna. Its my favorite beach town. Pure magic. They also have the Laguna art Museum which is fantastic.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Way too many people to name. It’s like standing on the shoulders of giants as Newton said. At first it was classmates and teachers at Cal Arts. I had fantastic teachers like Barbara Kruger and John Baldessari. Then all the artists I got to know after moving to New York. Pat Steir of course. I also met Jeff Koons shortly after that. Jeff hadn’t yet had his first solo show but he had already made some great work and was ambitious and thought about art in very unique and expansive ways. I was just on the island of Hydra to see his latest installation at the Deste’ foundation. It was amazing. I met Sean Scully in the nineties through a great painter freind James Hayward. Sean’s rigorous approach to painting was a great influence on me. I was able to see his amazing exhibition back in 2019 at the Venice Biennale. Sean was generous enough to curate my last solo exhibition at J.D. Malat gallery In London.

I moved back to L.A. in 2000 and started connecting and reconnecting with the artists out here. Watching my Father’s obsessive approach to making work was great to watch. He was also a constant experimenter with his work. Other artists like Larry Bell, Mary Corse, architect Frank Gehry and so many others were great to be around. All of the L.A. artists from my fathers generation have stayed really focused and down to earth. My Mother Avilda has a very sharp eye and interesting point of view and its always great to get her feedback. My Brother Cedd has also been influential and helpful in so many different ways. Over the last ten years I have been married to artist Kelly Berg and that has been another huge inspiration. We have so many interests in common from our love of Geology to our love of Egyptian art and of course our love of painting. Of course all of the dealers like William Turner, Melissa Morgan, Peter Blake, and J.D. Malat that have represented my work over the years as well as all of the collectors, curators, and writers that have championed it. Also a special shoutout to Billie Milam Weisman who has included my work in over twenty exhibitions. Billie has an amazing eye and really knows how to put together exhibitions that create really strong visual connections and true dialogues between the works. Joan and Jack Quinn were some of my first collectors and bought work before I ever had my first solo exhibition. All of these exterior experiences have been amazing but it is my constant internal search that really drives my work.

Website: andymoses.com

Instagram: @andymosesart

Image Credits
All photos courtesy of Alan Shaffer Photography