Moppett was born in England on March 12, 1945, the eldest of four children, and immigrated to Calgary with his family in 1957.
[1][2] He has worked at different times as a curator, gallery director and teacher while pursuing a career as a painter.
In 1988, he showed recent work with the 49th Parallel Centre for Contemporary Art, New York and in 1990, Katharine Ylitalo for the Glenbow Museum in Calgary organized Painting Nature with a Mirror; Ron Moppett, 1974-1989, a travelling exhibition.
[1] In 2010, Moppett showed his work in two group exhibitions, Triumphant Carrot: The Persistence of Still Life, at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Roadmap: Starting Points and Side Roads in Building a Collection, the Nickle Arts Museum, Calgary, Alberta.
[7] In 2020, curator Mark Lanctôt in an exhibition titled Painting Nature with a Mirror (he used the name of Moppett`s earlier show) at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal created a portrait of Canadian painting in the 1980s which included Moppett among its artists.