Martha K. Moore grew up on a farm in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. Her first formal art instruction was through local extension classes from the University of Virginia. At Emory and Henry College she studied with the late Professor George Chavatel. Martha became a high school English teacher, married, began a family, and earned an M.A. from East Tennessee State University. She continued to paint, exhibiting at the Virginia Highlands Festival in Abingdon, VA, and in shows in Elizabethton and Johnson City, TN.
In 1982 Martha’s family moved to Shelby, NC, where she taught English and created art as time allowed. In 2008, Martha left teaching to return to painting full time. She paints landscapes, primarily, but also flowers and animals, with realistic detail, in watercolor and oil.
Painting from photographs, she draws often on images from the farm where she grew up and from the mountains of Western North Carolina, as well as from her travels. In April 2009 she received the “Best in Show” award in Arts on the Square in Shelby, NC. She has also exhibited in Valle Crucis, NC, in the Carolinas Got Art Exhibition in Charlotte in October 2009, the Cleveland County Arts Council Competitions of 2009 and 2010, and in the Mountain Visions Exhibition at the Reece Museum of East Tennessee in the spring of 2010. Her work is shown at the Buffalo Creek Gallery in Shelby and the Visual Arts Center in Rutherfordton.