Reflecting the Dawn

Andy Moses
Reflecting the Dawn
Acrylic on concave canvas, 2007
40 x 96 inches
Museum pruchase with funds from Murray and Ruth Gribin
2009.003

Andy Moses’ abstract paintings eloquently suggest clouds, horizons, pools of water, deserts, or the sea but are not traditional landscapes. The references to nature are subtle and the viewer can interpret the paintings in more than one way.

Now that there are multiple new ways of viewing nature, for example, using Google Earth on the Internet, Moses seeks a way of instilling an understanding of terrain and sense of the sublime into landscape painting that is more consistent with 21st-century ways of viewing nature.

Yet Moses’ Horizon series actually comes out of the artist’s direct experience of nature, surfing and looking out to sea at the horizon while enveloped in the pearlescent glow of the sea and sky. Reflecting the Dawn is a grandly scaled lyrical abstraction that alludes to the horizon and to that elusive time of day when the sun is beginning to rise in opalescent pink, pearl, and blue.

Moses’ engagement with nature has caused him to discover that there’s a natural dialogue between what lies above and below the horizon. In Reflecting the Dawn he tries to capture the echoing of light between sea and sky.

The concave surface of Reflecting the Dawn helps to create a sense of deep space, putting the viewer at the center of a transforming panoramic experience that shifts as one moves around the painting.