Painter Forrest Moses spends a good part of his life in “the zone” – a place where he can leave cerebral constraints and give himself over to the creative forces of the universe. The art that comes out of this place is extraordinary – abstracted landscapes that seem familiar and foreign at the same time. With Bach or Mozart playing in the background, Moses usually begins with a photograph but it’s only a starting point. “I’m using my head when I’m starting,” he says. “But in the course of working I let it go. If I don’t, it might be a pretty painting, but it won’t have a soul. So I’ve got to let go. As soon as I get too technical – if I think too much – it’s over.”

Moses has spent a lifetime learning the lesson of letting go. Over the years he has flirted with some dark places, but today he knows how to find the light, both figuratively and literally. “The zone is an incredible place,” he explains, “but no one else can be there with you. You want to share it, but you can’t. It’s lonely. That’s the plight of an artist. Anyone who deals with the zone is out there alone. The great people are a little bit insane. Deliberately, I’ve tried to find balance because I could see the danger of it.” Moses has achieved equilibrium in his life, but it hasn’t come easy.

Forrest Lee Moses is a true son of the South. Born in 1934 and named after confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest, he grew up in Danville, Virginia. His childhood home was grounded in the formality of the times and the region. His father was a successful businessman who provided well for his family, but was emotionally distant. His mother provided some sense of fun, but it was at his grandparents’ farm that a young Forrest found his greatest childhood joy. The farm was only twenty miles out of town, but it seemed like a world away. “My grandfather had cows and he sold the milk. I would get up in the morning and go with him to deliver it. Looking back, it was a sweet thing,” Moses remembers. But it was his grandparents’ gristmill that really captured Forrest’s imagination. The mill, a five story wood structure, was built on the river just down from the “house on the hill.” To a little boy it was endlessly fascinating and mysterious. “Everything would be quiet and then all of a sudden the thing would come to life. The whole building would vibrate.” Moses smiles as he thinks about those happy summer days spent in the country.  “The farmers would come, mules and horses pulling flatbeds filled with grain. Everybody would be sitting on the big porch, chewing tobacco and talking. It was wonderful.”  And it put Forrest in touch with nature at an early age – something that would stay with him for life.

Back in Danville, Forrest was more or less left to entertain himself, and that led him to drawing. At age nine, he began studying with teachers at two nearby colleges, and his talent was obvious even back then. The family would have his work, mostly pastels and drawings, framed and hung on the walls. “It was the way my family related to me,” he says. “They always treated the drawings with such respect.” That was the early fine art beginning, but his sense of design, which turned out to be his first career path, came from his mother. “My mother was a creative person,” says Moses. “Her house was her palette, her canvas. She liked to find old broken down pieces and restore them. She had some beautiful things, but everything had a sense of rescue and heart. That was unusual.” Moses credits his mother for helping him “see.” He says she not only saw with her eyes but with her heart as well. He has tried to integrate that simple philosophy into everything he does.

It certainly shows in his Santa Fe home. He bought the classic adobe back in 1969, and has, over the years, modified it to fit his lifestyle. He added a studio onto the back of the house – a large, light-filled space with big windows overlooking an impressive garden. On the other side of the property a charming outdoor living/dining room sits caddy corner to the main house.  It’s not a patio, it’s a free standing room – two sided and covered.  A sitting area is arranged on one side, a large table stands in the middle of the room and a small fireplace is tucked into the far wall. “I have a lot of dinner parties out here,” says Moses. “It’s the perfect place to watch a thunderstorm without getting wet.”

The main house is filled with things that have in one way or another touched the artist, giving the house an eclectic, comfortable vibe. It’s full of Asian, Virginia country, and Native American influences. All parts of Moses’ life are collected and displayed here – each piece obviously chosen with care and placed with care. Pointing to an unusual free-standing intricately carved wood crucifix, Moses says he wasn’t sure about the piece until he brought it home and tried it out. “It was just perfect,” he says. And he’s right, its placement in front of a mirror, gives the viewer a back and front view at the same time.

Moses considers his house a work of art and takes as much care and consideration with it as he would with a painting. The bones of the house are beautiful – traditional kiva fireplaces grace almost every room – including the master bath. The living spaces seem to blend into each other with few boundaries; one room leads to another. The thick adobe walls offer relief from the summer heat and winter cold, and they wrap the home in a cocoon-like ambiance. The architecture is authentic, but it’s the artist’s touch that gives the home its “wow” factor. The home is his sanctuary.

The path that brought Moses to Santa Fe was a winding one through Virginia, Southeast Asia, Europe, New York, Texas and finally California, where Moses had a spiritual reawakening that changed his life. But the journey began in Virginia. He went to college, predictably, at Washington and Lee University, earning a degree in fine art, followed by three years of military service. “I was saved by the Navy,” he says. “I was so starved for experience and excitement. I was stationed in the Philippines, but I would go to Japan on leave and it left an indelible impression on me. I felt totally connected to Japan – the sensibility of taste and design.” After the Navy, Moses spent a year in Europe where he was heavily influenced by the contemporary architecture and design in the Scandinavian countries of Denmark and Holland. His collective experience overseas pushed him to pursue a career in design. Art was still on his mind, but Moses just didn’t think he could make a living selling paintings, so he headed to the Big Apple and enrolled at the Pratt Institute. It was an exciting time artistically. Abstract Expressionism was rocking the art world and some artists were cashing in. Moses was influenced by the times but still wasn’t convinced about the money side of things. After two years at Pratt, he moved to Houston for a job at a design firm. Southern Texas was not exactly an art Mecca, but the business side of the art world was changing there as well. Corporations were starting to buy, and collectors outside of New York were jumping into the game. “There was a guy in Houston who would put on art shows in the storeroom of a commercial paint company,” Forrest remembers. “He would have big parties – lots of art, lots of booze – and he would sell out. I knew I was better than most of his artists. At the time, I was painting and selling my work to some of my clients, but I wasn’t taking it seriously as a profession.” That was about to change.

With $2,000 raided from his savings account, Moses headed to California with the intention of painting full-time. He was planning on settling in Los Angeles, but one camping trip up the coast changed his mind. “I saw Big Sur and the Monterey Peninsula and there was just no question in my mind, this is where I wanted to be,” he says. What followed was three years of transformation and revelation. Before leaving Houston, Moses asked a friend, a spiritual advisor, if he thought the move to the West Coast was a good idea. The minister told Moses he believed that it was the right move and that he would find his spiritual home in California.

Reassured, Moses headed west. He found a small, cheap studio in Carmel and began painting six hours a day. The rest of the time he spent exploring the unspoiled coast. “I would sit on the rocks at Point Lobos and experience nature in the most primal way. I realized this is where the truth comes from. You just have to watch and listen. All the information, the truth is around you all the time; you just have to be awake!”

He was also coming to terms with the conservative conventions of his southern upbringing. Those tried and true sets of beliefs were not working for him anymore; he was rejecting organized religion and trying to figure out what would fill that vacuum. It was a spiritual and personal identity crisis, and it was traumatic. Big questions about who he was and how he would live the rest of his life overwhelmed him. Finding the answers wasn’t easy.   It was like stripping away layers leaving the exposed parts raw and unfinished. He admits to a breakdown, but says in many way it was a breakthrough. He had to let go and find a new way.

Moses likens it to the story of the prodigal son. “The young man leaves the comfort and security of his father’s house to go into the world, and he experiences the emptiness of it and becomes a broken human being. At that point in a person’s life you either make the decision to go back to THE father – the spiritual one, not the human father – or you continue on and lose your soul. That’s the point when you decide if you are going to be grounded in spirituality or in the secular life.” For Forrest that was the revelation. He had found his spiritual home – not in a physical place, but rather within himself.

So began the second stage of his personal journey, one that continues to this day. A spiritual pilgrimage that involves in large part the natural order of things. Free now to choose where he wanted to live, he knew the place would have to be naturally beautiful and quiet enough for him to listen to the land. He found what he was looking for in Santa Fe. He was finally home.

Over the years, Santa Fe has grown up and so has Forrest Moses. He lives alone with his two corgis, Alexander Beauregard and Billy Boy, and a cat named Bobby, but many friends satisfy his social side. He likes to have fun and says that’s a distraction he finds time for because the work is, for the most part, solitary. Painting, printmaking and photography keep him occupied in the studio. As always, the landscape is his inspiration, but there is no attempt at realism. “Lately, I’ve gotten very involved with reflection,” he says. “It’s better not to look directly. It’s better to look reflectively. So all my work is about reflection now. I don’t try to paint the ideal landscape with the horizon. I don’t do that. I think of my painting as expressionistic – an expression of my energy.”

Moses especially likes the landscape as autumn turns to winter, and most of his work focuses on that bittersweet transition when the color and detail are at their most vibrant, but everyone knows the inevitable fade to winter is coming. Moses spends hours in the woods with his camera looking for the magical convergence of form, structure and light.  He will work from the photographs to build the foundation of a painting – a roadmap of sorts – but it’s just a suggestion. Moses has no problem veering off the planned route. He lets the painting unfold naturally. “I like to stop just short of that last stroke of energy,” he says. “I always like to let the process of the painting show through. There are places in some of my paintings where you can even see some original pencil marks.” The layers of the work, like the man himself, show evolution. Moses has learned to combine his spiritual energy with superb painting technique, giving him the freedom to create his own distinct view of the landscapes he loves.

After more than 40 solo shows and four decades of nonstop work, Moses has secured his place in the art world, but he is always looking for new challenges – embracing the process of discovery. “It’s easy to reflect on the last thing you’ve done or the last group of things that you’ve done, but you can’t. You have to let it go,” he says philosophically. “It seems as if everybody is making a product, but when you realize the product is your heart and the painting is a byproduct of your soul then it’s a different issue. The painting is no longer a product; you are not making something to sell. You are making something that is alive. That’s the evidence of who you are, where you have been and where you are going.” By opening his heart and letting go of the baggage, Moses keeps his art honest, and in the process, stays true to himself as an artist and a man.

Written by: Erin Clark

ARTWORKS Magazine – Fall 2008