John Moyers

Born in 1958, John Moyers grew up in an artistic environment in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His father, sculptor and painter William Moyers, was his first role model. As a child, Moyers displayed a natural affinity for art, and during his early years—surrounded by paintings and sculptures—he was able to experiment with clay, charcoal, India ink, and watercolors. Eventually he moved on to acrylic and oils.

After graduating from high school in New Mexico, Moyers was invited to live in the Laguna Beach area with one of his father’s former art teachers, John Noel Tucker. Tucker was a talented teacher and painter, and he really opened Moyers’s eyes to the world of art. He also took advantage of daily critique from Tucker. During that same period, he attended classes at Laguna Beach School of Art and Saddleback Junior College, wherever he could find life drawing and figure painting classes. In 1978, Moyers started taking his plein air work to Robert Lougheed for critique but only when he returned home to New Mexico from art school during breaks. In 1979, Lougheed invited him to paint along with several other artists at the Okanagan Game Farm in British Columbia, Canada. Moyers then decided to leave art school and return to New Mexico, where he could spend a dedicated amount of time studying and painting alongside Lougheed year-round.

In 1982, Moyers married fellow artist Terri Kelly Moyers, whom he originally met at the artist gathering at the Okanagan Game Farm. They live in California, where he and Terri continue to paint en plein air as much as possible. Moyers loves to paint in Hawaii, a place that has captivated his interest since his youth. Together the couple has traveled and painted all over the world. Both artists consider their outdoor work critical to their studio work.

During Moyers’s 40-year career he has won numerous awards, some of them considered the most prestigious in the Western art world. Most recently, Moyers received the Gayle Roski Stories of the West Award at the 2022 Masters of the American West. In 2021, he won the Director’s Choice for Excellence for Vanguard of the Northern Plains at the Prix de West.  In 2017, he won the James R. Parks Trustees' Purchase Award for The Elders' Walk at Masters, and the Harrison Eiteljorg Purchase Award for The Way to Sacred Water at the Quest for the West. In 2003, he received the Robert Lougheed Memorial Award at the Prix de West. A seven-time winner of the Cowboy Artists of America’s (CAA) Kieckhefer Award (Best of Show), he has also received numerous Gold and Silver Awards in oil and water-soluble media at their annual exhibition and sale.

His work is in many museum and private collections throughout the world, and has been featured in such publications as Art of the West, Southwest Art, Western Art & Architecture, and Western Art Collector.

John Moyers is represented by Legacy Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico; Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson, Arizona; Maxwell Alexander Gallery, Los Angeles, California; and Parsons Gallery of the West, Taos, New Mexico.