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Variety the spice of life for Clarington artist

Nancy Moore showing in Port Perry in April

Moments and Destinations

Jason Liebregts / Metroland

NEWTONVILLE -- Newtonville artist Nancy Moore has a solo show, Moments and Destinations, at The Kent Farndale Gallery in Port Perry. It runs April 5 to May 1 and there's an opening reception April 5 from 2 to 4 p.m. March 30, 2014

By  Mike Ruta

DURHAM -- Nancy Moore lives on the edge -- of Durham, that is.

The artist and designer lives in Newtonville, at the eastern end of the region in Clarington. For the most part, she has naturally looked east and north in terms of her involvement in the arts, including taking part in the Northumberland studio tour.

But she wants to start showing her art in Durham and you can see her work at Moore's Moments and Destinations show, running from April 5 to May 1 at the Kent Farndale Gallery in Port Perry.

A look at her website reveals that Moore likes variety. She works in oil, acrylic, pen and ink and is branching out and experimenting with other media as well. And her subject matter is wide-ranging as well.

"I get bored doing the same thing over and over again," she says. "I'll do a portrait and then scenery and then work on a figurative abstraction piece."

She's done one mixed-media piece and is planning another, since Moore says the first sold immediately.

Abstraction is "totally new to me," but perhaps another route she'll take in the future since, entered in a juried show in Cobourg, she sold a piece "right off the wall." And after it had a "sold" sign on it, she had a lot of inquiries about the piece.

Moore has an excellent website/blog and there's interactivity. She posts "teaser" pieces she's made, lately some of the works that will be in her Scugog show. And she asked viewers their opinion: should she post her new work on the website or wait until the Farndale show?

A question she asked herself in relation to the Port Perry show was, mix of old and new work or just new? Moore says she will be showing virtually all new works, with roughly half of the show devoted to people and the other half to landscapes.

Born and raised in Ajax, Moore was always encouraged to make art by her parents, including her father, Wayne Moore, a retired artist who lives in Bobcaygeon. She started drawing as a child and, by the time she reached the early years of high school, her mom's friends would ask if she could paint their cottage, for example. She would sometimes receive $50 for such a piece, quite a payday for a young person.

But her parents did want her "to find a job that will pay you" and Moore became a graphic designer.

She does life-drawing, noting she and other artists in her area will go in together on a model. And while she likes working with a live model, Moore says it’s “taxing” for the model to sit for a lengthy time period. So she’ll make sketches at the session and create paintings later.

Also on her lengthy wish list are working in glass and, in the near future, a possible collaboration with an artist who works in stone.

Moore doesn’t see her artistic restlessness as a problem -- quite the opposite.

“I’m all over the place but I never have a shortage of things to paint,” she says.

The Kent Farndale Gallery is in the Scugog Memorial Public Library, 231 Water St., Port Perry.

There’s an opening reception on April 5 at 2 p.m.

Visit her website, nancymoore-artist.blogspot.ca.