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Questions & Artists: Watercolorist Joye Moon

On Oct. 13, the Miller Art Museum will welcome award-winning watercolorist Joye Moon to Door County for an artist talk and demo.

The Oshkosh-based painter’s history in art and teaching is as rich as the color and texture of her masterfully executed watercolor paintings. She has taught hundreds of watercolor workshops throughout the state (including at Peninsula School of Art) and country, and this fall will lead her 27th international cultural tour. She is also the author of the bestselling art book, Exploring Textures in Watercolor (2008).

Moon is one of 40 artists in the Wisconsin Watercolor Society Fall Exhibition 2016 at the Miller Art Museum, now through Nov. 1. Her artist talk and demo begins at 10:30 am on Thursday, Oct. 13 at the museum. To see more of Moon’s work, visit JoyeMoon.com.

 

“Amber Sunset" by Joye Moon.

“Amber Sunset” by Joye Moon.

Alyssa Skiba (AS): When did your life as an artist begin?

Joye Moon (JM): The moment I could hold a crayon in my hand. I just always had a passion for creating something so my mom, every time she put something in my hand I created something. I was born this way.

 

AS: Who influenced your interest in art?

JM: I had an exceptional junior high school teacher, John Chekis, who exposed kids at such a young age to not just drawing and painting; we did everything in junior high from etchings, intaglio printing on copper plates, we did ceramics, centrifugal force casting for jewelry. In junior high! It was quite amazing the foundation I got here in Oshkosh and then when I moved to the high school, it grew on that. We got to do everything so when you signed up for art, you didn’t just take painting or pottery or photography, you had everything.

 

AS: Why did you settle on watercolors?

JM: I always kept coming back to watercolor as my true love and my best way to express myself. It is the most manipulative, the most responsive, you can do so much with it. You can have all sorts of different looks. It can be very subtle colors and beautiful glazes to very rich, heavy, saturated color. The variety you can get with it is never ending.

 

“Summer Swing" by Joye Moon.

“Summer Swing” by Joye Moon.

AS: It took you 16 years, off and on, to earn a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh. Did you find there was an evolution in what you were creating over that time?

JM: There is always an evolution. If you’re calling yourself an artist, there should always be a change. There should always be something new happening and I get a little bit upset when people say to me, ‘Oh, you changed your style.’ No, I’m still learning and growing as an artist and trying new things and challenging myself so as I was in college for those on-again, off-again 16 years, there definitely was an evolution because I was becoming a different person, I was more mature, I had children at home, I had to juggle a husband, packing lunches, getting kids to school before I could even get there.

 

AS: How did you get your art out there?

JM: The way I’ve gone about it is trying to get my work into recognized, juried national and international competitions. That’s how I built my name as an artist. Some you get in, some you don’t because the competition is so stiff. I think I’m at about 185 of these juried national and international competitions.

 

AS: You paint a variety of subjects – portraits, florals, landscapes, abstracts, collage. Is there a unifying element to your work?

JM: The color, the saturation of pigment I use, the freshness, the cleanness, the clean lines I like to get. It’s very tidy painting. I’m not a sloppy painter.

 

“Floating in Venice" by Joye Moon.

“Floating in Venice” by Joye Moon.

AS: You’ve recently started incorporating the human figure into your landscapes. Why the crossover between figures and landscapes?

JM: For me, just doing a portrait with a nothing background does not interest me at all. It can be an abstract background, that’s kind of fun, but I like to put them in an environment because it tells more of a story. It engages people on multiple levels … It’s so much more evocative than just a portrait.

 

AS: How do your travel opportunities differ from your workshops?

JM: In general, our trips are cultural experiences and you can’t help but go to these areas and have an art slant; the architecture in Barcelona or the cave paintings in the south of France. There’s always something to see and learn – the weavers, the potters, outside of Athens we went to a world famous icon painter and his icons are all over the world. We went to his studio, which was a huge warehouse and he demonstrated for our entire group … and we got to actually burnish some gold onto a piece. Everybody loved it.

 

AS: What has been the most important thing you’ve learned as an artist?

JM: What I think was even more important to my growth as an artist from college was the fact that I started to work with nationally recognized artists around the country and I would take workshops with different people that I thought I could learn something from … I would go to these workshops or if they were in the area luckily I could get them close by but sometimes I’d have to travel for these and that taught me so much more than what my college days taught me because it showed me what an artist needs to do, the commitment they need to have to truly live their life as an artist.

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