Norma photographing Spicewood Springs Trail.
The Wanderer
-by Leigh Baldwin
When Norma Jean Moore was three years old and supposed to be napping, a policeman knocked on her family’s door. She had escaped through an open window and been found wandering Main Street with two German Shepherds at her side and an armful of apples. She hasn’t really stayed put since.
Moore’s military father was stationed anywhere from Anchorage, Alaska, to Orleans, France. That meant art opportunities were hit-or-miss, but paper and pencils were always somehow available. “I was five years old, and I was using the package of 64 Crayola crayons and drawing peacocks. I wanted to use as many colors as I possibly could,” she remembers. Like many young artists, she drew constantly, without instruction or formal direction, for her own joy. Nature was a constant inspiration.
In 1973, Moore began studying at the University of New Mexico, but her wandering heart had other ideas. “I was racking up credits and had no exit plan – I wasn’t ready to settle on anything.” She left school for New Orleans and made good money waitressing, meeting a lot of interesting characters -- including her future companion, Alan. Soon she had enough saved for them to travel to Mexico.
A summer in interior Mexico began what would become a lifelong love affair with the Mexican culture and Spanish language. “It was just a fun way to travel – we enjoy learning and meeting people – we’ve been back many times for summer language programs since.”
After returning to Albuquerque, Alan encouraged her to finish her college education. Thinking to her childhood, she began taking drawing and painting classes in the Fine Art Department at the University of New Mexico. Of course, like many artists, her love of the visual arts was tempered by the practicality of finding a means to support herself. She earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in art education and taught art in public schools for 24 years.
The wealth of day-to-day experience in the classroom tempered her shyness and provided a window to understanding the importance of the arts. “If anything, teaching art helped ensure I maintained my own studio practice. The children challenged and inspired me. Navigating the education system helped me be more organized and gave me the opportunity to become a strong public speaker – skills artists need.” In fact, Moore even shared an exhibition with some of her student artists, her own work – a series on children’s iconography – in conversation with theirs.
Moore is a full-time artist living in San Antonio, Texas. Her studio is located behind her house in what is locally known as a casita. Although in her own backyard, this landscape is essential to her painting inspiration. Her volunteer work as an Alamo Area Master Naturalist and her membership in the local Native Plant Society has helped to produce a more novel and native landscape that brings her wonder and awe daily.
Wandering local parks and wilderness trails remains an apt metaphor for her painting process. “A sense of being in unknown territory, unable to see the end destination – there’s a serendipity in walking or hiking. It’s like when you don’t know where a painting is going, but you keep putting one step in front of the other. You just give yourself over to it.”
Moore carries the remnants of photographs, sketches, and sentient memories from her time in nature into the studio to explore in paintings. She aspires to capture the sense of discovery experienced on these wanderings in her work.
When not painting, she gives back to the land, working on her own and with environmental groups to create a variety of “pocket” landscapes that will help support and sustain an ecology that is disappearing. “Just putting my hands in the soil calms and feeds me,” she says. Moore also writes often on the intersection of art and ecology.
Moore’s work can be found in museums and private collections, and she shows extensively throughout Texas and the Southwest. Her paintings have either exhibited at or collected by the Art Museum of South Texas, the Mexic-Arte Museum Austin, the Institute for Latin Studies at Norte Dame University, the Southwest School of Art, and the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts. More information can be found at normajeanmoore.com.