[4] He studied at Edinburgh Art College, where he was taught by William Gillies, Robin Philipson and James Cumming.
[6] He was Head of Painting and Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art, where he worked for 25 years until 2005 and is credited with helping to steer the resurgence of figurative painting at the School.
Painters like the so called New Glasgow Boys of the late 1980s including Steven Campbell, Peter Howson, Adrian Wiszniewski and Ken Currie,[2][5] in addition to Jenny Saville and Alison Watt, were among his students.
[7] In 2018 Moffat received an Honorary Doctorate from Glasgow School of Art in recognition of the contribution that he, along with Sam Ainsley and David Harding, had made in nurturing and developing artists which enhanced Glasgow's reputation as a centre of creative practise.
[3] Examples of Moffat's work are held in the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland,[8] the Russell-Cotes art gallery, the University of Edinburgh, Fife Council, the University of St Andrews, the Museum of the Isles, the Orkney Islands Council, the North Ayrshire Council, and the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture.