By Lenore Vickrey
The final seconds were ticking down in the 2023 Iron Bowl, and Auburn fans could smell a victory inside Jordan-Hare Stadium. Their team was leading 24-20, and Alabama was facing a 4th and goal on Auburn’s 31-yard line. Daniel Moore was watching the game at home in Birmingham, and he was not liking the way things were going.
“I was sunk down in my couch so bad you’d had to dig me up,” he remembers. Bama fans were seen praying in the stands. So were Auburn fans. After all, this was the Iron Bowl.
Photo by Lenore Vickrey
Alabama had gotten the ball following an Auburn fumbled kickoff reception, but the next series of downs were nerve-wracking. Quarterback Jalen Milroe was sacked. On the next play he scampered down to the 11-yard line, only to get a bad snap on the next play, losing 18 yards. On top of that, he was penalized for crossing the line of scrimmage.
That series of mistakes were weighing heavy on the Crimson Tide when Milroe stepped up, took his time, and hit Isaiah Bond in the corner of the end zone with a perfectly thrown touchdown pass. The final score, 27-24.
Of such plays are sports rivalry legends made. And Daniel Moore knew he had the next gameday moment he would capture on canvas.
“I had no idea,” he recalls, remembering the improbable leaping catch that sealed Alabama’s victory. “That one…it was one in a million.” That moment became “Fourth & Thirty-One: Gravedigger,” his latest in a career of game-changing moments the renowned painter has created over the past 46 years.
Every painting project starts with a visualization in Moore’s mind. “The first stage happens in your head,” he says. From there, he begins his research, locating photos of a key play either online, from a TV freeze-frame, or from freelance photographers, to create a preliminary sketch in about three weeks.
Once that’s done, his New Life Art Gallery in suburban Birmingham can start promoting the coming painting and taking pre-orders. Most paintings take him about four months to create, before the finished work is ready for reproduction as a lithograph print, giclee print, canvas edition, or small collegiate classic print. He does all painting at his home studio.
Some paintings, like 1993’s “The Tradition Continues,” commemorating Alabama’s 12th national championship in its Sugar Bowl victory over Miami, take longer than others. He estimates that work took more than 1,200 easel hours. Another, “Unrivaled,” celebrating Alabama’s 18th national championship win in 2021, took him five months to complete.
Since 1979, Moore has created more than 300 different images celebrating key plays in college and pro football games, golf, basketball and even soccer games, as well as portraits of legendary coaches. Known primarily for his depictions of his alma mater, the University of Alabama, he has also painted game-winning plays by Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Ole Miss, Tennessee and others. He’s also published two books of his work, Crimson & White and Other Colors and Iron Bowl Gold, which features watercolors of 41 years of the Auburn-Alabama games at Legion Field with commentary by sportscaster Keith Jackson.
Fans like Bama Clines of Rogersville look forward every year to Moore’s latest work. He owns 45 of Moore’s large format prints which he displays at his home and his tax preparation office in Rogersville. But he’s fast running out of room.
“Every painting he (Moore) does is a pivotal moment in history,” Clines says. “Having one of his prints is like looking at a photo. I just enjoy walking around and looking at them.” His favorite is 1979’s “The Goal Line Stand” (“I hunted it for several years”) but adds, “I really love the portraits of Bear, Gene and Nick. I don’t know where I’ll put DeBoer when he paints him. I may have to buy a bigger house or a bigger office.”
‘The Goal Line Stand’
The artist came by his talent for art and his love for sports honestly. Moore’s mother, herself an artist, encouraged her son’s artistic talent in childhood. When he was assigned a fifth grade history project on George Washington, she pulled out her tubes of oil paints and brushes so he could create his first portrait. He still has that original painting from 1965. His father, a devoted University of Kentucky fan, passed on to Daniel and his other three sons his passion for sports.
One of Moore’s fondest memories is watching the 1985 Iron Bowl from the Legion Field end zone with his dad, as Van Tiffin kicked the winning 52-yard field goal to give Alabama the win. “We were sitting behind the goal posts, jumping up and down with everyone,” he recalls. It went without saying that he would create his next painting, “The Kick,” from that play.
In art classes at Berry High School in Birmingham, he dabbled in painting, but like most teenage boys, his attention was drawn to more social activities. At the University of Alabama, he became a fan of the “photorealism” style, although his art professors were not. Graduating in commercial art and painting, he worked for a Birmingham ad agency and then for Alabama Power Company, where his talents were noticed and he was asked to produce a cover for the company magazine of an employee who was running in the Boston Marathon. The result was the “Wings of Eagles” poster which he self-marketed with ads in Runner’s World magazine. The addition of the Isaiah 40:31 verse (“But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.”) at the bottom reflected his strong Christian faith.
“I had been selling my own paintings as a sideline up to that point,” he writes in his Crimson & White book, “but now my entrepreneurial spirit kicked into full gear.” Little did he know that the very next year, that spirit would go into overdrive and his life would be forever changed.
On Jan. 1, 1979, Alabama, led by Barry Krauss, had dramatically held off Penn State from scoring a touchdown and winning a presumed national championship in the Sugar Bowl. That famous play at the goal line was the talk of the office, where a fellow Bama fan suggested to Moore that he paint the play. The result was his first sports painting, “The Goal Line Stand,” which sold in 1979 for the unbelievable sum (to him at the time) of $10,000. He was on his way to becoming a sports legend in his own right.
“Technically, it’s not my best work, but because it was my first, it’s my favorite,” he says, while sitting in his gallery, surrounded by dozens of prints and original oil paintings that now sell for as high as $85,000.
Over the years he has painted all of the big Alabama wins, several of arch-rival Auburn and many SEC schools that have won championships. Even Iron Bowls like the infamous “Kick Six” Auburn victory from 2013 was captured as “The Rundown” on canvas by Moore. With those, “I might not have the adrenaline flowing as I might with MY team, or doing paintings of my daughters, where you have a part of you in it, but you still approach it like a work of art and try to make it the best work of art you can.
“Art doesn’t lie within the subject matter,” he adds thoughtfully, “but the subject matter can certainly get some juices flowing that might not be there for something else.”
The past four decades brought changes in the technology of art reproduction, allowing prints to be made more quickly and precisely with the help of high-end scanners and computer programs like Photoshop and InDesign. In the end, however, “brush always has to meet canvas,” Moore notes.
He’s used what he calls a “hybrid” technique which blends photography with painting as in 1993’s “Crimson Legacy,” a reimagining of Coach Bryant’s office to illustrate 100 years of Alabama football. He spent hours building a set in his home studio, simulating Bryant’s desk, taking individual photos of old pictures in the proper perspective of the viewer. The painting includes several symbolic items including a clock above Bryant’s photo showing “3:23,” representing his career victories, and a helmet and jersey numbered 92, for the inaugural football year of 1892 and the centennial year of 1992. The prints were a sellout.
He used the same technique in similar paintings celebrating the heritage of Ole Miss, Arkansas and Kentucky. In 2022, he recreated Coach Nick Saban’s office as a sequel to “Crimson Legacy.” For “The Legacy Continues,” he used digitized images of his previous artwork to include in the finished oil painting. Once again, he included symbolic images such as Saban’s straw hat, curtains made from game jersey material and even his own Crimson & White and Other Colors book (yes, Saban did have one in his office).
“My challenge is to paint all of my painted elements to match the same degree of photorealism that a photo has,” he says. “There’s a happy marriage.”
The good and the bad
The past four decades have not been without controversy. In 2005, Moore was hit with a 60-page lawsuit by his own alma mater, challenging Moore’s use of Alabama trademarked images. For someone who’d worked closely with the university for 20 years, it was especially hurtful and costly to fight the suit. Legal wranglings dragged on for eight years, but he ultimately won in federal district court, and on appeal to the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta on first amendment grounds.
“Had I lost, it would have put me out of business,” Moore says. “They wanted the money from the licensing. It was all about money. They made us go back 20 years digging up everything, receipts, it was a mess. But praise God, we’re (still) here.”
A proud moment came in 1996 when the U.S. Postal Commission selected Moore to create all four of the “Legendary Football Coaches” commemorative stamp collection, which featured Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, Vince Lombardi, George Halas and Pop Warner. Moore had initially sought to be considered for just the Bryant stamp because he had painted the coach on several occasions, but was doubly excited to be chosen to paint all four coaches.
For a painter turning 71 in February, what can possibly still inspire him after nearly 50 years? The same thing that always has. “Games, plays, careers like Coach Saban’s,” he says. His most recent work is a digital montage of his previous paintings of Saban, a tribute called “The Legend.” He’s working with Terry Saban and their Nick’s Kids foundation to provide 100 signed prints for donors.
He also still enjoys attending games, although he gets around a bit slower these days due to issues resulting from four failed back surgeries. In the old days, he’d take his own gameday photos, but now he just soaks in the gameday atmosphere like a regular fan, always mindful of the next painting possibility. With a new coach at Alabama, and challenges in an expanded SEC, there’s bound to be opportunities to recreate more magical moments with his brush.
“There’s always so much going on in sports,” he says. “There’s always something out there to motivate me and excite me.”
For more information:
New Life Art
3600 Lorna Ridge Drive, Birmingham, AL 35216
Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. • 800-735-2787 • www.newlifeart.com
