Geoffrey Moss
Geoffrey Moss defines himself as “… simply a working New York artist”; painter, photographer of motorcycle culture (The Biker Code), former art restorer, Metropolitan Museum of Art, syndicated captionless political satirist of MOSSPRINTS, conceptual illustrator, children’s book author, set designer, essayist and university teacher. Ultimately all my work is about drawing…the purity of drawing in both paintings and works on paper. Over time, the work has become comfortably less representational, focusing more on the reduction of shapes, forms to reflect the interaction of color, the energy of paint; the way the paint – the physicality of painting -- documents the personal dialogue of spontaneous movement, finding form as a visual statement as in the architecture of water. It’s about my dedication to the anatomy of shapes I arrange and rearrange. I work in series, a process beginning with sufficient numbers of drawings to continue idea-to-canvas. My lexicon stems from restrictions of the Bauhaus, 18th C. erotic Japanese prints, Russian Constructivism, religious symbols, Chinese medicine labels and vintage comic books. Experience confirms my personal truth, that art begets art, feeding a compulsion to generate and continue the dance. I received Pulitzer Prize nominations for MOSSPRINTS, (Watergate and 9/11) resulting in the publication of a collection of my early works, The Art and Politics of Geoffrey Moss, as well as an invitation to paint Bus with White Walls for the Smithsonian Institution exhibition In the Spirit of Martin. Moss holds degrees from The University of Vermont (B.A., Distinguished Alumnus) and Yale School of Art and Architecture (B.F.A., M.F.A.). Learn more about Moss from Quogue Gallery and an article in Discoveries in American Art. Shimmering Water Series: Beach Blanket, 2011, 36" x36", Oil on Canvas. Gensler New York Project Black Drawing Series: Brief Encounter, 2015, 15" x 13", dry pigment and waxes on Stonehenge paper Bus With White Walls, 2003, 30" x 40", Oil on Canvas. Smithsonian Institution, In The Spirit of Martin exhibition