STILL LIFE AND ADVERTISING

In the late ’40s and early ’50s, when advertising relied heavily on illustration, Moss was eager to take any assignments that came his way. Still life painting was at the core of Moss’s development as an artist and the basis for much his work throughout this career. From tight renderings of liquor bottles to the iconic Fluffernutter sandwich for the Fluff jar label, he enjoyed the challenge of creating an idealized realism for advertising assignments. Moss’s son still remembers delivering the final Fluffernutter art with his dad in 1961. (This label is still in use as a tiny image on the back of the jar.) 

As you look through the sections of this website, note of the dates to see his rapid development of skills from the time he left the Marines in 1946 to the time of his first commercial assignments in 1948. His single year at Pratt seems to have been formative. Over his lifetime, he was especially influenced by American 19th-century still-life painter, William Harnett, who specialized in trompe l’œil.  Building his skills to create paintings that would “fool the eye,” Moss returned to this technique in his paintings throughout his life.