Growing up on the Vine yard with their father — painter Andrew Moore — Hannah and Gordon Moore quickly became accustomed to the quirks and idiosyncrasies of an artist’s lifestyle.
“A good way to understand what it was like growing up here,” Gordon said, gesturing to the sprawling two-story home and studio in Harthaven that Andrew built just before his children were born, “is that you could just open the freezer at any point and there would be a seagull or some other creature that my dad wanted to paint sitting right next to the hamburger meat.”
Andrew spent his childhood summers on the Island, before moving full-time into his parent’s garage in 1985, immediately after graduating from college. In the decades since, he built a house next to the garage, as well as a gallery to showcase his work. The gallery is now home to the work of his children as well, both artists in their own right.
The three close-knit family members reunited on the Vineyard last week for Hannah’s inaugural show at the Moore Family Gallery.
Hannah’s paintings, mostly images of friends and animals set against the backdrop of the Island’s ponds and beaches, will be on display until July 27 in her exhibit titled Reverie. While her style is distinct from her father’s in tone and mood, the two share a common artistic ethos and passion for the natural world. Interested in biology and ecology, father and daughter similarly see their realist paintings as an inquiry into nature’s complexity.
An avid collector of moths, bees and other bugs, Hannah contends that the aim of the naturalist painter is to faithfully bring nature into people’s homes. Growing up on the Island, she focused equally on science and art, before attending Syracuse University and the Rhode Island School of Design. She credits her passion for entomology for allowing her to see the world from a different perspective.
“Learning about these different insects, a lot of them are so small like you might not even realize that you’re passing them when you’re walking around,” she said. “When you bring science and art together it allows you to understand the world better. Being able to look at like a field and see it as more than just a field, to see it as all these little elements, it becomes so much greater than just a field.”
Working mainly in watercolor, her first show transforms everyday scenes from the Island — a white cat surrounded by songbirds, assorted mushrooms growing on the forest floor — into vivid and expressive portraits with crisp, clear colors.
When Hannah’s exhibit closes at the end of the month, Andrew’s begins. His artwork is reflective of his decades spent exploring the boundaries between humans and nature. Many of his pieces are set on the shores of Tisbury Great Pond, featuring the diverse inhabitants of the brackish waters.
“Science can be analytical and a little dry,” Andrew said. “By injecting art into these natural processes, you are breathing life into these creatures. The merge of science and art allows you to better understand the world around you.”
“I like design that is balanced,” he added, crediting much of his artistic philosophy and precise style to his study of architecture. “I like art where it’s not jarring, it’s not a political statement. It’s not the shape of an ego. Rather, [I like] when it’s a place that you enter, that you go into and you just feel at peace. Where you can feel the nature, like all the elements are balanced.”
Gordon recently moved to Brooklyn, but a small selection of his work is also highlighted at the gallery. A ceramicist, Gordon said he also finds himself inspired by the Island environments of his childhood.
During his senior year studying at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, he was forced to leave school and return home due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Much like his father before him, he ended up staying on the Island long after graduation.
“I was looking for a kiln on the Island to finish my thesis work from my senior year, and I found Micah,” Gordon said, referring to Micah Thanhauser, of Merry Farm Pottery in West Tisbury, another Vineyarder and Brown University alum. “I ended up working with him for a year and a half.”
During Gordon’s time at the studio it received a large amount of Island-sourced clay from a construction project looking to clear a foundation. Additionally, the pair of potters would make their glazes out of the ash from the studio’s wood stove.
Working with clay and glaze sourced directly from the Island’s trees and cliffs, Gordon felt more connected to the land he grew up with than ever before.
“It was amazing working with local clay, seeing how you can make something new out of it,” Gordon said. “The more you understand the world, the more you become grateful for everything that goes into it.
The culmination of his thesis work turned into the award-winning short film Rain Pot, which is available for free online.
Gordon will soon head back to Brooklyn, and Hannah has plans to leave the Island in the fall, perhaps to Brooklyn like her brother or to Maine, she said. Andrew will remain as will the Moore Family Gallery, as it continues to showcase the family’s art. He remains confident too that his children will return, again and again, to be inspired by the unique landscapes of the Vineyard — along with whatever works-in-progress lurk in the freezer.
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