I'm Laurel Moore. I'm a wandering artist who travels from place to place, painting your favourite spots and sharing my music with whoever stops to listen.
I love to paint new places and beauty spots on the road. I particularly love to sing, play sax live, and meet the people behind the places I visit.
Online is just a window - but live, is the whole room. You feel the air, the people, the movements, the full breadth of feelings.
I hope to pop up and see you somewhere soon!
Welcome to my world of Art, Music and Spirituality
I really appreciate your visit to my website.
These days I am a traveling artist and musician, who gives live street performances - going where the wind takes me.
The more online I think I went, the less real I felt. Of course some things work well online, but art and music is felt with our bodies, with our whole selves. Online seems to makes ghosts of our energy, and we drift around haunting the world.
Where is our true living energy?
These days I prefer to center my music and my art portfolio on my website.
It's complicated when you do multiple things in The Arts these days. In the past, my art ended up on a few sites over here, my music here, there, and everywhere. There were always hot new sites popping up to host your art or music. So on and on it went. But for me over time, it felt like some kind of self-imposed insane chaos.
There is a kind of spiritual peace and calm that settles when everything you love can be found in the right place, exactly where you left it.
And I hope that anyone who likes my art will also like my music, since it comes from the spiritual home.
Life in beautiful Scotland .........
When I reached my 50's the curtain began to pull away from the horrors of my past - from both my monstrous parents. My body began to remember, and the long buried memories surfaced at last.
I guess I learned to live with Multiple Personality Disorder. I guess I worked around it as best as I could. You stumble along, and work around your problems I suppose. But working it all out, untangling it all, became a very long journey for me.
My different skills were bound up in my separate personalities too, so finding them, dumping them, then trying to relocate them again, has been a monumental challenge.
I suppose this is why the concept of 'energy' is so crucial to me and my life. Because I believe we can reclaim our lost energy, locate pockets of our missing energy, find where it is hiding, and be reunited with it. It can return to its true energy 'family source' within us, no matter how traumatic the start.
Learning the true path of energy flow - in order to harness it and work with - it is a wonderful and miraculous thing.
It feels like seeing a talented child grow at last, in a nurturing place. And when the inner child is happy, the whole family begins to shine. We all deserve that.
In my 'normal' life, I was always obsessed with music and art. My musical trail began by playing the piano and accordion. I then progressed to renting a tenor saxophone whilst at college - and driving the neighbours mad by playing the same song over and over again. In time I formed a mini jazz band with a talented guitarist. And one lucky day whilst busking, we were discovered by a hotel manager and offered the opportunity to perform weekly in his hotel in Portsmouth, UK.
When I married and had a family, life took us to Switzerland, Abu Dhabi and then Qatar. I then had the opportunity to begin playing tenor saxophone and painting again. The new desert landscapes were so enthralling to paint and I began to play with my own jazzy style on tenor saxophone and vocals.
Life And Paintings Of Switzerland
I was very moved by the population of stray animals there, and began to initiate local neutering programs with animal rescue groups. Additionally, I began curating charity art exhibitions.
I organized many animal charity fundraisers and art exhibitions in Dubai and Abu Dhabi which culminated in a 50 artist strong exhibition and art auction at The Millennium Hotel, Abu Dhabi with the support of:
Hamad Ghanem Shaheen Al Ghanem, Breeder, Registrar General and Director of the Saluki of Arabia Club.
Mr Hamad was devoted to his Salukis, and always trusted their character assessment of people. He would always watch his dog, to see how they responded to a person first. And or course, the dog was always right.
In my time in the Middle East I exhibited at many local galleries in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Qatar and London: most notably at Jalal Luqman's Ghaf Gallery 'Visions Of Speed' Exhibition and Abu Dhabi Art Hub.
I also won second place in Abu Dhabi's 'The Dream Players' musical talent show by singing and playing tenor saxophone.
I curated the exhibitions 'Beyond' and 'Window' which was a showcase for up-and-coming Emirati and local artists. This was inaugurated by His Excellency Ali Saeed Bin Harmal Al Dhaheri. All these events were widely publicized in Time Out, Gulf News and other newspapers and magazines.
At this time my art was also featured in two art publications:
I was then given the opportunity to perform at the first TEDx Abu Dhabi, at the University Of Abu Dhabi where I showcased my singing, tenor saxophone playing and painting as a medium of storytelling.
In 2011 some of my artwork was selected in the 'Best Of Worldwide' Portrait and Landscape Art Publications.
When we moved to Qatar I became involved in the music scene and began playing Jazz Tenor Saxophone at hotels. I became the Resident Solo Jazz Singer and Saxophonist at the 5* Continental Hotel in Qatar. It was a wonderful opportunity to indulge in playing and singing all the classic jazz songs I loved and it was a thrilling and glamorous experience - it was especially dazzling to perform during the Christmas festival brunches for a mixed expat and Qatari audience, which were a very lavish affair.
Moving back to the UK I began working on my Art and Music career again, I teamed up with talented Canadian guitarist Steve Parisien and in 2014 we received the Academia Award for 'Best Jazz Album' in 2014. Then for a time in Oxford, UK I performed as a singer and saxophonist at many restaurants and pubs.
My move to Scotland allowed me to curate all my artwork on this website: from the deserts of Abu Dhabi to the Empty Quarter in Qatar, to the cottages of Switzerland. It has been lovely to bring them all out of their little hidy holes and present them here.
In Scotland, I also began to record my new saxophone songs, and produce my first album 'Beach Sax', now available for download.
My last chapter involves being a full-time traveling artist, and living my life the way I want. As a way to maximize my happiness.
My life was feeling increasingly cloying and cluttered again. I think I believed all the lovely things around me made me even happier. They didn't. I felt like I was drowning in them. Things, began to feel heavier and heavier, like millstones around my neck. A sure sign I think that I needed to make changes in my life again.
So I am drawn to a very simple life. And that, for me, involves performing and presenting my art live, to real people with real music, real energy, real life.
I look forward to seeing you soon, Laurel
