Kenneth Moore: Lookin’ Seein’ Feelin’

In the early conceiving of this exhibition – Moore’s third solo show with the Gallery – I knew something different was called for…and for several reasons.

Moore’s early work from the 1970s and 1980s had never been publicly exhibited before. At the age of sixty-nine at the time, the self-taught, Los Angeles-based Moore’s first solo gallery show had only been four years ago in 2019, after I’d become fascinated upon seeing his recent paintings on social media. Following its success, a second show was opened in February 2020 and despite what followed over the next year, enthusiasm and sales continued.

The purchase of his painting, “THE NIGHT BEFORE SACRED TRUTH” by The Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA for their permanent collection in 2022, validated this “art world outsider” (John Dorfman, Art & Antiques Magazine, Jan.’20) as now being a critically accepted painter.

Still, everything we essentially knew about Moore’s work had originated from the paintings finished in the last several years. But I knew that the artist had a backlog of early paintings, drawings, and collage; or paintings started in the 1970s but edited or completed recently.
It became clear that these were early gems which needed to be seen.

Much of this work has its “roots” in the late 1960s/early 1970s as the civil rights movements were increasingly becoming a fundamental part of the nation’s consciousness. And while Moore explores this territory with prolific alacrity, it’s also his humor and the love of painting and drawing which resonates. As we see in these collected works, his subject or themes remain as eclectic today as they were fifty years ago. The styles may vary from Expressionism to Cubism to Surrealism. But study the drawings, the bedrock of most great painting – nearly all created in those early years – and we find the easy-going fluidity, the confidence, even the minimalism we recognize as the foundations of paintings like “SPEECHLESS” or “FOUND”.

But this is his story to tell…The Black experience in America, historically, has been suppressed, silenced, and “white-washed”. Even today, in the third decade of the 21st century, there are still those in power vociferously trying to mute the Black narrative, the honest and forthright history of the African American experience. But Black history is American history,,,indeed Human history, and there’s never been a more urgent time to be honoring BLACK HISTORY MONTH.

This is my friend, Ken Moore’s show, his story – a survey of fifty-plus years of paintings, drawings, and collage – created over a lifetime in near obscurity and with no particular career goals, no pretentious ego, no commercial aspirations in mind…only the pure, unadulterated need to express himself the best way he knows how. And we – the fans and collectors – are made the richer for the experience. Thank you, Ken!

Frederick R. Holmes
February 2, 2023