Moe Brooker was a Philadelphia-based abstract painter who employed a jazz-like visual language to create expressive, rhythmic compositions. Having completed a large-scale quilt, Moché, during his first FWM residency in the mid-eighties, Brooker returned to FWM in 2011 to debut a new scarf multiple in the summer exhibition, Close at Hand: Philadelphia Artists from the Permanent Collection.
Brooker describes the development of his artistic practice:
“For several years, I have been interested in a modified figure-ground relationship: the division of the picture plane into three fields of space, in which shape defined and organized the pictorial space. Overlaying both the field and the shapes were a series of calligraphic lines…Presently a change has begun to manifest in two ways: the image and the format. The image is now composed of overlapping patches of dense gesture, in a word, layers, and the format is now small and square.”
In this print on silk, Brooker, a preacher’s son, conjures the sounds and emotional vibrance that recall his childhood in the church through its vivid colors and abstracted forms. Brooker was often artistically inspired by his faith and regularly incorporated “ttgg” (”To the Glory of God”) in the titles of his artworks, including the scarf edition, as a recognition of his religious devotion.
