SEATTLE, WA.- Frederick Holmes And Company presents Los Angeles-based painter, Ken Moore in his third solo exhibition - a survey of paintings and drawings from the 1970s & 1980s to today - in Seattle.
After decades of painting for his own creative, intellectual, and expressive needs, diligently working in virtual obscurity out of his home, Moore experienced his first solo gallery exhibition, “CONVERSATIONS IN BLACK SURREALITY”, with Seattle’s Frederick Holmes And Company in 2019. The Gallery has since become the exclusive representative of the artist.
From that Gallery debut to today, Moore’s work has found a passionate following of collectors and enthusiasts. John Dorfman, Editor-in Chief (ret.) of ART & ANTIQUES MAGAZINE, wrote an editorial in 2020, describing Moore as “an art world outsider”, and making a favorable comparison between the artist’s work and that of Paul Klee and Gino Severini. “…the Los Angeles-based artist’s paintings, which seamlessly balanced elements of Cubism, Surrealism, and Expressionism, while referencing Jazz, African myths and diaspora, and racism in America.”
That editorial caught the attention of Frederick Walz, Ph.D, Curator of the Columbus Museum in Georgia, who wrote to the Gallery in November 2021, expressing interest in Moore’s painting, “THE NIGHT BEFORE SACRED TRUTH” for the museum’s permanent collection. Moore described this extraordinary painting, which had been admired by many Gallery visitors, as “…a moment, perhaps in a dream or nightmare in which confusing religious/spiritual beliefs and ideas are no longer considered sacred, but rather as crumbling edifices of shallow piety. This painting was done as something of an epilogue to “AGAIN”, the painting that preceded it - a painting that depicts a lifeless black body hanging from a leafless tree, along a bloody road where an empty, meaningless church stands.”
In February 2022, Moore’s painting was juried among others and selected for purchase by the museum. Today “THE NIGHT BEFORE SACRED TRUTH” resides in the permanent public collection of The Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA.
This special survey will present a curated selection of never before exhibited drawings and paintings from the 1970s, 1980s, and today; charting the self-taught 74 year-old Moore’s half-century journey of personal and cultural exploration and expression.
