Steve Moors

Steve Moors is a digital artist who has exhibited in the United States and United Kingdom. Notable exhibitions include Tew Galleries in Atlanta, The Other Art Fair, Get Real Art Gallery, and NYA...

Steve Moors is a digital artist who has exhibited in the United States and United Kingdom. Notable exhibitions include Tew Galleries in Atlanta, The Other Art Fair, Get Real Art Gallery, and NYA Galleries in New York City, as well as the David Hemper Gallery, Daniel Shrödinger Gallery, and Victoria & Albert Museum in London. 

The artworks may have the appearance of ink drawings or oil paintings but are in fact hand-drawn digital works. For the purposes of the article we will be focusing on Series no. 3 and Series no. 7. These distinct series share commonalities in approach of sheer oddity of presentation, often invoking hallucinogenic or dream-like qualities, the imagery often remains mythologically inspired and even absurd. Series no. 3 appears to sometimes depict mythological creatures similar to satyrs and minotaurs while Series no. 7 often depicts festivals, carnivals, and circuses with morbidly smeared clowns and spectators. There are depictions of somewhat reality-based characters but with unusual scenery combining landscapes with cityscapes in an unnaturally juxtaposed yet integrated manner.

Containing low saturation, motion blurs, strategic negative space, and outlined linearity, Steve’s works take the viewer on a journey reminiscent of a David Lynch film such as Wild at Heart, combining both contemporary and vintage scenery with peculiar depictions and situations. Most notably, the coloring becomes strategically placed to indicate the central importance of the subject while the monochromatic background merely becomes a compliment to the viewer’s central focus.   

Beekeeper ( pictured above) depicts scenery of young adults looking in the direction off the surface as a young man points his rifle at an unknown threat or prey. What makes the digital painting peculiar would be the random presence of the beekeeper on the shore and the young people appearing to be smiling, as if they are joyfully hunting on the beach rather than being threatened. With hot pinks and earth tones, a beach scene becomes created through abstract smears. With their faces motion blurred, the figures blend with the abstract background rather than act in contrast with the composition. 

Steve Moors can be described as a storyteller engaging in portrayals of oddities such as clowns on gigantic stilts towering over the viewer in industrial carnival zones. His works give us a break from the mundane repetition of contemporary working life and offer us a glimpse into his dream-like imagination. He engages the viewer in storytelling not in illustrations but rather through settings of atmosphere through his strategic depiction of methodical motion blurs, negative space, linearity, and central color-focusing. Through Steve’s wild imagination, the viewer can explore a variety of unfamiliar vintage, contemporary, and even ancient subject matter engaging with each other with contemplative and odd machinations of behavior.

Artist website: https://www.stevemoors.com

Saatchi Art: https://www.saatchiart.com/stevemoors

Rise Art: https://www.riseart.com/artist/82480/steve-moors

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevemoorsart

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stevemoorsart