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Nationally acclaimed New York artist Geoffrey Moss brings a richly varied exploration of his many-faceted artistic perspectives to Connecticut in a new show running through August 15 at the Good News Cafe and Gallery.
Moss's works have been featured in major exhibitions in New York, Washington, Paris and other locations over an artistic career spanning more than three decades. His current show, “Outsider. Insider. Landscapes & Political Drawings,” provides an exciting introduction both to the vibrant landcapes of his recent oil paintings on canvas, and to the powerful, sometimes provocative and richly nuanced art of the political drawings that have earned him acclaim and a loyal following of his syndicated sketches published in newspapers nationwide since the 1970s.
Among the featured paintings in his Good News exhibition are selections from his recent “Canoe” series of landscape studies. In these works, Moss uses one or several canoes as the focal point for explorations of nature filled with sparkling reflections of light against water, the dynamism of waves and movement, and the calm of hill-rimmed shorelines. The artist explains that he has chosen the subject of canoes “because they are so symbolic, independent, American, but subsequently they intrude, begging the viewer to ask, ‘What will happen next?’”
Another, dramatically different view of Geoffrey Moss’s world emerges from the featured selections from his vast body of work in drawings, which have earned him a national reputation for constantly pushing the envelope of political cartooning in the United States. His pioneering political drawings without captions, which first appeared on the “Washington Post” Op-Ed page in the post-Watergate era, have reached newspaper readers nationwide through the Post Writers Group syndicate and most recently the Los Angeles-based Creators Syndicate.
“As a conceptualist, Geoffrey Moss is credited with forming a unique metaphorical language, drawings so powerful and multi-leveled that they need no tag lines,” the artist’s biographical notes observe. “For more than 25 years, Moss has doggedly refused to use traditional captions, dialogue or labels in his work, relying on the intelligence of editors and readers to ‘get the message’.... His unique syndicated graphic feature, ‘Mossprints,’ cannot be categorized as traditional ‘political cartoons.’ Fans and critics alike, because of the artistic nature of his drawings, refer to his visual column as ‘an artist’s take on politics.’”
The author of the book, The Art and Politics of Geoffrey Moss, Moss has received two Pulitzer Prize nominations for his political cartooning, the first for a series of drawings during the Watergate period and the second for his perspectives on the tragedy and aftermath of September 11, 2001. Among his recent honors was his selection as featured artist in a permanent exhibition space in Washington’s Newseum.
While his political drawings figure prominently in his national reputation, those most familiar with the artist readily recognize that he cannot be easily pigeon-holed in a particular medium or genre of work. Indeed, Moss has received acclaim for wide-ranging works as a satirist, painter, theatrical set designer, photographer, teacher, and author and illustrator of children’s books including “Henry’s Moon.” In summer 2004, he contributed three whimsical sheep sculptures—titled “Sheepsicle,” “The Rocket Sheep” and “Ewespaper”—to the “Sheeptacular” outdoor exhibition staged in Pittsfield, Mass., to benefit community arts.
Discussing the uncommonly wide range of his work, Moss observes in his artist statement, "As a working artist, I am continually conscious that critically it is confusing to categorize all that I do. All the work comes from one place, and feeds on all that I pay attention to."
His artistic works have been featured in major shows at diverse venues including the Modern Museum of Art in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the San Francisco Cartoon Museum, and the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. From 2002 to 2004, his mosaic, “Bus With White Walls,” was featured in an exhibition celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. which visited the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and six other museums nationwide. Moss’s works have also become part of important art collections including the Yale Gallery, the Flemming Museum, the Poynter Institute, the Comcast Corp., and the American Can Co.
Moss’s most recently published book is “The Biker Code: Wisdom for the Ride.” The book is a collection compiled over three years of emotionally powerful black-and-white photographs, portraits and interviews exploring America’s motorcycle culture.
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