View artwork
Descended from homesteaders, Mark Moseman was raised on a farm near Oakland, Nebraska. After earning degrees in architecture and city planning, he taught at New York’s Syracuse University and was an urban designer in Phoenix, Arizona and Kansas City, Missouri. He also studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. Moseman has traveled to Europe to study the art and architecture of France, Germany, and Great Britain. After his parent’s farm was lost in the 1980s farm crisis, he began to create art inspired by his agricultural heritage and is known for his pastel paintings of agrarian subjects.
As an artist in the 1990s, Moseman created the term Agrarian Art, defined as art relating to lands, fields, or their tenure – a genre of art now recognized by the Smithsonian Institution. In 2007, Moseman became Founding Vice President and Chief Curator of the Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art in David City, Nebraska. During the first five years, he designed the museum and led its development, defined a national agrarian art mission, and exhibited major American artists.
Moseman is listed in Who’s Who in American Art as both a curator and an artist. In addition to organizing many museum exhibitions, he and his wife are also collectors and have developed the Mark and Carol Moseman Collection. It is among America’s most significant collections of agrarian art with works spanning from 1850 to 2010. Selected examples were donated to the Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art and the Center for Great Plains Studies/Great Plains Art Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. He also serves as curator of the Moseman Collection, occasionally organizing exhibitions or loaning some of its works. He says about his two roles, “Painting improves my vision as a curator, and curating improves my vision as a painter.”
American Artist magazine featured Moseman’s figurative work in a “Realism Today” special issue whose aim was to provide “a lasting record of the most significant work created by realist artists at the beginning of the 21st century.” Highlights of his many awards include: Judges’ Bronze Medal, Art for the Parks Top 100; Pastel Society of America Award, Allied Artists of America; and American Artists Professional League Award, Hudson Valley Millennium. Meadowlark, the painting in the Museum of Nebraska Art collection, was awarded Best of Show at Art in the Woods by guest juror Stephen M. Doherty, Editor-in-Chief, American Artist. It was also featured on the cover of the July/August 2000 issue of Nebraska Life magazine along with an article on the artist. Friends and family are often depicted in his paintings, and Moseman’s wife Carol was the model for his Meadowlark painting.
Sioux City Art Museum (Iowa), Great Plains Art Museum, and many other venues have held solo exhibitions of Moseman’s paintings. The Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio included his work in national invitational exhibitions. Moseman’s affiliations include the Pastel Society of America (Signature member), American Plains Artists, MidAmerica Pastel Society (Master), and the International Association of Pastel Societies (Master Circle Pastelist).
After living in Kansas City for many years, he and his wife returned to Nebraska and reside in David City.
Adapted from information provided by artist, 2014
View artwork
