Artist in Residence Mario Moore to discuss exhibit "Mothers and Sons"

A portrait of a single person can reveal a world of family and social connections, according to Mario Moore, Artist in Residence at Knox College. Moore will give a talk about his exhibit of paintings and drawings, "Mothers and Sons," at 5 p.m., Friday, May 29, at The Box Gallery, 301 E. Simmons, Galesburg. The talk and exhibit are free and open to the public.

"The exhibit is about our lives as black people, to show that our lives matter, and to show the maternal instinct that mothers have to protect their children," said Moore, who has taught painting for the past ten weeks at Knox, at the same time that he was creating some of the works in the exhibit.

The Knox College Artist in Residence program is funded by a grant from Blick Art Materials.

"I noticed that media portrayals of black mothers often focused on women who were crying or mourning, when their black sons are being killed," explained Moore, whose work uses painting and other media to examine social and political change.

Moore incorporated photographs from local residents into some of the works in the show.

"I wanted to celebrate what our lives are like today," Moore said. "I asked for photographs from students and the community, so they could collaborate with me."

"The show also explores the relationships between mothers and sons in my family -- there's a painting of my mother holding a photograph of me, a painting of my sister with her new son, a large painting of me as a kid that talks about the larger context of what it means to be a black man today in this country."

Moore said his painting course at Knox, which concentrated on portraiture, sought to impart a wider view of the role of art and the artist in society.

"As artists, we can get so absorbed in ourselves and our own work, that we forget about everything that's happening around us," Moore said. "So you start by focusing on drawing another person, asking them how they want to be represented. I wanted that to be the focus of the class -- to broaden students' ideas of the community, other people, other races, other cultures, as well as their own history of themselves."

Moore says his interactions with Knox students have encouraged him to widen his own interests. "In discussions and critiques, students had a lot of ideas, things that I could start to think about in my own artistic practice, such as materials that I hadn't used before -- like watercolors and pen and ink."

Earlier this year, Moore was included in RESPOND, a group exhibit at Smack Mellon Gallery in Brooklyn. The show collected 200 works by artists responding to issues of racism and social justice, following the killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown by police. Moore also has worked as a sculptor on two major motion pictures, Real Steel and Red Dawn.

Moore received his BFA in Illustration from the College for Creative Studies in 2009, and an MFA in Painting from the Yale School of Art in 2013.