ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Although he is focused on painting, internationally-acclaimed artist Ron Moppett also practices graphic art, sculpture, and assemblage. Born in England, he moved to Canada at age twenty-two, and studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design (1963 – 1967) and then the Instituto de Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Describing his aesthetic, he writes, “Most of my paintings involve a jamming up of often disparate aspects: An intellectual and emotional complex—a visual poetry. Like a dream. My ‘triggers’ can come through my own drawing and art history or just as likely, the world of fashion, advertising, and cartooning. A confluence of the recognisable with the identity of the picture plane with large paintings that you can walk into.”
Moppet has staged scores of solo exhibitions, including Painting Nature With a Mirror at the Edmonton Art Gallery, Slow Painting at the Trépanier Baer in Calgary, and Ron Moppett, Moonlight: Paintings from 1996 – 2009 at the Michael Gibson Gallery in London, Ontario. He’s also participated in more than a hundred group shows, including for the Canadian Society of Graphic Artists in Ottawa, Festival Del La Postal Creativa in Montevideo, Uruguay, and 9 From Canada at the Canadian Consulates in Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago.
In addition to be being held by private collectors, Moppet’s work dwells in more than forty public and corporate collections, including those of the Alberta College of Art and Design, the Art Gallery of Algoma, the Glenbow Museum, Imperial Oil, Trizec Corporation, and the National Museum of Canada.
Moppet has won several Canada Council A and B grants, the Gershon Iskovitz Prize, and an Alberta Centennial Medal. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. |