David Moore - Small Works
Opening this week at Cascade Art Gallery is a new exhibition of fresh, small‑scale paintings by celebrated local artist David Moore. In this exhibition, Moore explores the intimacy and quiet romanticism he continues to rediscover while living and working in the heart of Creative Castlemaine.
This exhibition will be officially opened by acclaimed musician, singer, and songwriter Rebecca Barnard, marking a special celebration of Moore’s enduring contribution to Australian painting. All welcome!
David Moore is a highly respected Australian painter whose career spans more than six decades. Based in Castlemaine, Moore is best known for his still life and landscape paintings, executed primarily in oil on linen or wood panel, and gouache on paper. His practice is grounded in tonal realism and disciplined observation, yet his work remains responsive, observed and enduring.
Moore’s artistic foundations were established early under the guidance of his father, Graham Moore, an accomplished tonalist painter and influential teacher in Melbourne. Painting alongside his father from the age of eleven, Moore absorbed a rigorous approach to tone, structure, and observational restraint. This early grounding shaped a lifelong commitment to painting as a craft sustained through discipline, patience and sustained looking, rather than adherence to stylistic trend.
A significant turning point came in 1970, when Moore was awarded the Alice M. E. Bale Scholarship, providing him with a studio and mentorship under leading figures in Australian art. Exposure to conservation practices and close study of great European artworks, deepened his understanding of paint, surface and material presence—principles that continue to inform his work.
Composition is understated, allowing subtle tonal shifts, spatial relationships, and surface textures to guide the viewer’s attention. Muted blues, warm reddish undertones and finely balanced tones emerge gradually through layered paint.
Landscape remains central although in this show we do get to meet local canines, Smudge and Jude, David’s trusted whippet companions! Moore’s paintings of central Victoria often reverberate the everyday - roads, long shadows, and expansive skies which evoke place, time, stillness, and quiet presence, encouraging slow and contemplative viewing. Billowing, amassing cloudscapes feature alongside a few little gems, painted in Italy whilst tutoring students in Sicily.
Alongside his studio practice, Moore has had a significant influence as an educator, teaching tonal painting at Montsalvat in Eltham for over 30 years and in the last decade, David has tutored many local emerging and prominent painters who have turned their hands to towards the discipline of tonal painting.
David Moore – New Paintings offers a refined and thoughtful exhibition by an artist whose work continues to evolve through attentiveness, discipline, and a deeply felt engagement with place.
Evening Clouds, Dean
Oil on Linen, 53 x 63 cm