About the artist:

Neil Moore was born in 1950 in Oxford, UK, of Australian parents. He was educated in Melbourne and Canberra, his chief interests from an early age being art and ancient history. In 1972 he completed an Honours Degree in Fine Arts at the University of Sydney, taking up a teaching position there in 1974. He left four years later, first to indulge a passion for rebuilding old motorcycles and then to pick up the threads of practical art which he had abandoned shortly after starting university. In 1979 he began doing black and white drawings for Australian newspapers, winning a Walkley award in 1980. The same year he made his first trip overseas, working for British publications and beginning his travels in Europe. For the next 8 years he moved backwards and forwards between Australia and Europe, increasingly fascinated first by France and then Italy. He supported himself drawing for newspapers and magazines, and illustrating books. Having learnt to draw while working as an illustrator – he never went to art school - he began in 1982 a career as a fine artist, becoming quickly immersed in the medium of etching. In 1984 he spent time at the Citè des Arts in Paris, and then in Berlin. In this period he exhibited in France, England, Germany and Italy, and completed his illustrated children’s book The Voyage of Naram-Sin. In 1988 he moved permanently to Italy, establishing himself with his young family in a remote hilltop town in Umbria not far from Spoleto where he began to paint in oils, supporting himself working for Italian publishers. Having taken two years off to restore a medieval ruin which is now the family home, he currently divides his time between painting and working with his wife Carol on their highly acclaimed Living Italy programs, introducing the art, history and daily life of Italy to the thinking traveller. They have three children.