Moe Brooker: ‘Listen with your eyes ttgg’ Scarf

Moe Brooker is a contemporary American abstract painter. His brilliantly colored abstract canvases are characterized by a varied array of mark-making and recessive space, with layered, juxtaposed patterns and a lively sense of formal invention. Born on January 1, 1940 in Philadelphia, PA, Brooker has exhibited widely, earning honors such as the Artist of the Year Award from Governor Edward G. Rendell of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 2010 and is included among the permanent collections of important institutions like the Studio Museum in Harlem. Following his education at the Tyler School of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the early 1970s, the artist decided to move from semi-figurative paintings to pure abstraction, explaining this change as due to a desire to paint vibrant and rich African-American culture but lacking the representational iconography to do so. Brooker stated in his acceptance of the James Van Der Zee Lifetime Achievement Award from the Brandywine Workshop that “if you are given a gift, using that gift in its fullest sense is true worship.” Brooker continues to live and work in his hometown of Pennsylvania, PA.