David Moore Jr. | Color Finds Form

The show, Color Finds Form, opens with an artist reception from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on November 3, 2022, during the Northrup King Building’s monthly First Thursday. A second artist reception will happen on Saturday, November 5, 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m., during the second day of Art Attack, the Northrup King Building’s fall open studio weekend. Moore will talk about his show on December 1, 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., during December’s First Thursday. The exhibit will run through January 7, 2023.  Moore will donate his sales proceeds to The Minneapolis Foundation.

      Moore, a retired theater artist and philanthropist, initiated his current series of paintings in 2017 after assembling everyday objects into an evolving tableaux: old fabric, bits of lumber, plumbing, packaging, ironwork, abandoned mechanical parts, toy soldiers, and plaster reproductions of iconic figures, including a large bust of Napoleon. “These arrangements often remind me of the scale models I built decades ago when designing stage settings for theatrical productions. I incorporates a ‘set’ from this detritus, and then transcribe what I see into paintings. In the activity of rendering, I’m always checking to see if what’s happening feels true to me. I have mishaps all the time, which are stimulating for their abstract results. As my spatial and visual experience has grown, so has my rendering of color.”  All of Moore’s paintings are acrylic on canvas or on paper, matted and framed.

About the Artist

 For three decades Moore worked professionally on the East Coast and in the Twin Cities in theater and performing arts, starting as a stagehand and later as manager and independent producer.  He moved to the Twin Cities in 1987 to lead the Playwrights’ Center.  In 1996 he formed 3 Legged Race New Theater & Performance, a multi-disciplinary company premiering more than sixty original works by rising and established artists from New York, Minnesota, and elsewhere.  Of the hundreds of writers and artists he has supported many today number among the most recognized and influential in the field.

      Since 2007 Moore has exhibited his visual work regionally in several group shows.  Previous exhibitions include, Persistence of Vision, a two-person exhibit with the late Fred Larson, at the University of Minnesota, 2015; Armature at Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art in Minneapolis, 2017; and Searching High and Low, 2019, at The Woman’s Club of Minneapolis. In 2023 he will assist the University of Minnesota’s Quarter Gallery with an exhibition celebrating Fred Larson’s work, life, and influence.

      A graduate of The Putney School, Moore earned an AB in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard College, initially studying scenic design before switching to drawing and painting with Dimitri Hadzi and Flora Natapoff.  At the Yale School of Drama, he studied dramaturgy and dramatic criticism under Richard Gilman, Leon Katz, Stanley Kauffmann, and Lloyd Richards, for whom he served as dramaturg for Yale Repertory Theatre’s world premiere of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. He has studied drawing and painting with Graham Nickson at the New York Studio School.  At the University of Minnesota’s Department of Art, he has studied with Hartmut Austen, Meg Bussey, Sean Connaughty, Lynn Gray, Diane Katsiaficas, Alexis Kuhr, Joyce Lyon, Avigail Manneberg, and Clarence Morgan. Among Moore’s current mentors is the artist, Lisa Nankivil.

      Moore is active in arts, education, and other nonprofit activities.  He serves currently as a trustee of the Guthrie Theater, whose government affairs committee he chairs, and on the boards of the Walker Art Center, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Camargo Foundation.  He is a member of the National Council for the American Theatre (Theatre Communications Group) and a former trustee of the Minneapolis College of Arts & Design and the Highpoint Center for Printmaking.

Gallery Hours

Saturday, 12pm to 4pm

First Thursday of the month, 5pm to 9pm