Santa Fe, NM - Born out of the kinetic intensity of Post-World War II Modernism, but tempered by the quiet spiritual meditations of the Hudson River School and Zen Buddhism, the work of Forrest Moses goes on exhibit from January 29th through February 21st at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe’s Railyard Art District. The show is entitled The Monotypes: Reflections of a Painter and brings together more than thirty elegant monotype paintings in what will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in several years.

Now in his ninth decade, Moses has long lived and worked in Santa Fe and is widely known for his intuitive and spiritual interpretation of being in nature. Converging elegant abstraction with vague reference to the familiar, Moses is celebrated for his unique expression of a sublime experience of landscape. Far from being pictures of any particular location, Moses’ paintings exist as imprints of the beautiful, mediated through authentic spontaneity and deft painterly mastery that allow pure exaltation to become the artist’s subject matter.

This exhibition features Moses’ unique monotypes which the artist describes as a medium that offers him an exhilarating opportunity for intense creativity. He makes these one-of-a-kind monotypes by painting with oil pigments onto a Plexiglas plate and then impressing that painting onto thick Arches paper through the pressure of a large etching press.

Moses is regarded as one of the great masters of the monotype medium. These works involve the same landscape subjects as his canvases but have the advantage of allowing the artist greater freedom of looser line and subtlety of hue in order to express poetically his intuitive understanding of the rhythms and pulses of what he calls “being present in nature and its truth.”

These works are visual articulations of the artist’s experience of the landscape characteristic of his oeuvre. Moses, reflecting on his long career as a painter, writes “I am the product of my lifetime and the paintings are the byproduct.” From time spent in deep contemplation of the experience of place, Moses’s poetic expressions transcend mere representation and become evocative of the profound experience of simply being in the natural world.

Giving over to the divining influences of nature, Moses approaches his materials with the concept of what he calls “an open heart.” Inspired by Eastern Philosophy, Moses creates work separate from his ego emulating the discipline of the craftsman and the heart of the Buddha: mindless of the process but mindful of the moment. His seemingly effortless works come from a place of surrender, conceding his own individual consciousness to nature’s currents resulting in a striking balance between abstraction and the recognizable. The process of surrender is echoed in Moses’s adept use of the monotype medium allowing for greater experimentation and refinement of his vision.

The monotypes in this exhibit exemplify the unmistakable aesthetic for which Moses is so widely regarded: reductive elegance and simple grace distilling essential forms of nature and combining restraint of line, delicacy of color and richness of emotional response.

The works resonate with life and transport the viewer with meditative enchantment. Where much of contemporary art has concerned itself with the tragedies of the modern era, Moses has stood steadfast in his commitment to create visual meaning through abandoning the profane of the everyday and reveling in absolute beauty. Each work invites the viewer to join Moses in experiencing the vibrant rhythms of the natural world as explored masterfully by the artist.

Forrest Moses was born in 1934 in Danville, Virginia. He holds a B.A. in fine art from Washington and Lee University and studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. With a career spanning more than 65 years, Moses has had work presented in solo and group exhibitions in a wide array of premier national and international museums, including the World Collection, Yokohama, Japan; Pratt Institute, New York; Art Dumonde, Tokyo; and the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, among others.