About the Artist

Wyatt Moody was born in Phoenix, Arizona. Growing up he spent much of his youth on his family`s 93,000-acre ranch, between Flagstaff and Winslow, Arizona, where the volcanic landscape, cinder cone mountains, and rugged canyons played upon his imagination. Arrowheads, metates and crumbling Indian ruins were abundant, and black volcanic cinders blanketed the ground, strewn with ancient mosaics of colorful red-on-buff and black-on-white potsherds, remnants of the Anasazi.

During his explorations, Wyatt regularly encountered elk, mule deer, and antelope as well as coyotes, fox, bobcats, and badgers. Often, his pockets would be filled with the lizards and snakes he had encountered. Upon returning from his adventures, he would sit for hours, carefully observing the minute details of his latest discoveries as he interpreted what he saw through whatever creative medium he had, be it pencil, pen, paint, or clay. No creature was too small, no detail too mundane.

When Wyatt was twelve, he captured a Gila Monster with his hands and brought it home. Not knowing that they were a protected species, his parents allowed him to keep it in his bedroom. By the time Wyatt was fourteen, he was collecting reptiles and amphibians with staff from the Phoenix Zoo and Out of Africa Wildlife Park. He gave lectures on venomous reptiles at public libraries, schools, appeared on TV, and regularly supplied zoos and universities with the different species of Arizona`s venomous snakes.

At the same time, Wyatt`s artistic abilities were becoming more evident. He spent time with local taxidermists to study in greater detail the wildlife he loved. He began to sculpt forms and do finishing work for taxidermy clients including the late artists Gary Swanson and Ted Blaylock, both of whom took an interest in Wyatt, providing him with passes to Safari Club International hoping to encourage and inspire him as a young artist.

Then, at the age of fifteen, tragedy struck, when, two months into his sophomore year of high school, Wyatt was left alone on his family`s ranch, where he would spend eighteen months in isolation, with no television, radio, phone, or human contact. While there, food was dropped off twice a month, and a horse, his dog and several guns were his only companions. Here, for the first time, Wyatt would encounter the thoughts and visions of ancient peoples, collected, over time, by the blackened walls of the canyons surrounding him. Wyatt still recalls the images and their surroundings; intricate geometric designs, depictions of wildlife, and ghostly human figures. This time period would prove to be one of the most difficult in Wyatt`s life, challenging who he had become and forever altering the course of his future.

Today, Wyatt will spend days to weeks at a time in the field, studying the colors, styles and textures of the rock art and wildlife of a specific location, as well as the relationships between those species and the way they interact with the geological features of the area. He will take hundreds of reference photos, measurements, and will often mix colors on location to match the brilliant colors of blooming cacti, wildflowers, and multicolored lichen. Back in his studio, Wyatt begins with a series of compositional sketches, refining concepts and evaluating the impact each piece will have. Afterwards, as Wyatt meticulously completes his final rendition using references from the field, a series of timeless, magical stories begins to unfold... as they have for thousands of years in the wild.