Reepham Road, Briston Common

Nigel Moody was born in 1961 in Woking, Surrey, but from the age of six he grew up in the Norfolk Broads after the family moved there in 1967. Although not born in the county,
he has little recollection of life before the move so considers himself, as in the words of Lord Nelson, ‘A Norfolk man’. Much of his childhood was spent rowing, sailing, fishing
and ice-skating on Hickling Broad, and exploring the surrounding marshes and reed-beds.
His first art teacher at school once asked Nigel what he wanted to do when he grew up. ‘I want to be an artist’, he replied. ‘You can’t be an artist’, retorted the teacher, ‘That’s
not a job!’ Undeterred, when he finished school aged fifteen, he began two years of Foundation Studies at Great Yarmouth College of Art and Design where, among the
various disciplines, there was a strong foundation of traditional drawing. Much of his spare time was spent drawing in and around his home village and Hickling Broad.
There followed three years of study at Winchester School of Art where he gained an Honours Degree in Painting. Winchester, during that era (1979 – 1982), was a hot-bed of
Expressionism and prided itself on being the avant-garde art school outside of the capital.
It boasted an impressive pool of staff and visiting tutors such as Graham Crowley, William Crozier, Basil Beattie RA, Sir Howard Hodgkin, Gillian Ayres CBE RA, Leonard McComb
RA, Vanessa Jackson RA and Norman Ackroyd CBE RA, to mention but a few.
Although during that time Expressionism did influence his work to some extent, by his mid-twenties Nigel had returned to a more traditional approach, inspired by, and
striving to follow in the footsteps of, those geniuses of the English landscape genre such as John Constable, John Sell Cotman and Samuel Palmer.

What the Malvern Hills and a bicycle did for the inspiration of Sir Edward Elgar, the same could be said of the country lanes of Norfolk and Suffolk where Nigel finds
inspiration in the saddle of his bicycle. The highways and byways, the vistas which reveal themselves around every bend or appear through a gap in the hedgerow, often shrouded
by the canopy of overhanging trees and unkempt Hawthorn and Blackthorn, are a recurring theme. The chiaroscuro, the infinite textures and nuances of nature, the road
wending its way through the folds in the landscape; the subject seems to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the expression of emotion, mood and metaphor;
and offers the challenge of striving to express, not only the spirit of the landscape, but the response of the spirit within.