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Butterflies in Love
Text: Ted G. Decker : Photo: Wayne Rainey
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When my excited six-year old niece recently told me she was going to see Britney Spears in concert, I thought, “Oh yeah? Big deal. I get to interview Beatrice Moore and write about her art.” I have been a fan of the remarkable activist, eccentric, and reclusive, but always present, Grand dame for nearly two decades. Her art attacks my sensibilities, permeates my senses, and often causes visual and emotional shockwaves, making me plead to see more, Moore.
Many know Beatrice Moore as the founder of Artlink, Inc., an organization whose cap’s major feathers are First Fridays (open gallery and studio night) and Art Detour weekend each spring when 10,000+ art enthusiasts visit downtown galleries, studios, and mystery galleries during the first week of March. With Tony Zahn, her life partner of over twenty years and an exceptional artist in his own right, Moore’s activist efforts on behalf of artists and the arts in downtown Phoenix, and their re-gentrification of the once-blighted, closed-in Grand Avenue are noteworthy.
Above all else, however, Beatrice Moore is an artist. Recent interviews and studio visits with the artist and an examination of her recent art making reveal a poignant glimpse into Moore’s past, her strong personal commitment to acquire technical expertise in order to be an accomplished painter, and a rare look at both the fortitude and vulnerability of one of our area’s most talented artists and intriguing people.
Born and raised in Dallas, Texas in a primarily single parent household that Moore describes as “working class.” Beatrice lived briefly as a toddler in Mexico City where her father, an executive of the Dixie Wax Paper Company, was assigned. Her father became estranged from the family, leaving Beatrice’s mother, a zoologist by training, to raise and provide for three children on an executive secretary’s salary.
Beatrice admits that her brief time in Mexico City had a “subtle, lasting effect on her view of the world” and sparked her curiosity and affinity with Hispanic culture. As a young woman, she worked as an artist’s model and took random art classes, but later while attending art, philosophy, and archeology classes at the University of Texas, Austin, she decided against pursuing an art degree. She quips that her grandmother would not pay the tuition for art classes where a nude model was present.
In her early twenties, Beatrice traveled extensively throughout Latin America, particularly in Mexico and Central America where she camped out at Maya and Aztec ruins and in rainforests with lush vegetation. She would often hitchhike with her dog or would travel alone by train or bus. In 1973, she spent nine months traveling by land from Dallas to South America.
“I was enamored with Hispanic culture and the mystical, masked ceremonies, as well as the beauty of the land and mysterious archeological sites,” says Moore.
Shortly after her return, Beatrice moved to Idaho where she became interested in weaving as an art form. She raised sheep and angora goats and worked with natural dye processes. Her art making interests expanded to mixed media and sculpture. During this period in Moscow, Idaho, Moore organized an exhibit of her art in an empty storefront window, an interest that would continue years later when she moved to Phoenix. Since creating Phoenix’s “Stop n’ Look: A Community Resource” in 1995, Beatrice has curated nearly twenty exhibits in a unique storefront gallery on Grand Avenue. (Moore and downtown Phoenix artist Bob Adams created the current window display, Winter Wonderland; Tony Zahn is creating the next one –Fourteen Stations of the Easter Bunny) It was also in Idaho when she made her first cake – a cracked open, heart-shaped confection that was a feminist statement about severed love and abortion issues – another interest that would surface again in Phoenix.
In 1984, she left Idaho and boarded a Polish freighter for Europe where, for the next two years, she lived for extended periods in Berlin and on a Spanish finca. She established a studio in each residence in order to continue to make art, primarily works on paper.
She and Tony returned from Europe in 1986 and settled in Phoenix where she immediately became immersed in the fledgling downtown art scene. In 1989, from an historic warehouse studio space, Moore organized the first Art Detour and founded Artlink, Inc., in order to create an environment where artists could exhibit and promote their own work.
She served as Director/President of Artlink for four years until she refocused her considerable energy on saving a group of historic warehouses from demolition for the construction of sports facilities. She became acutely aware of the need for artists to own their own spaces “in order to guarantee stability and political input into downtown development.”
Since 1992, Moore and Zahn have purchased, renovated, and converted a score of small warehouse and commercial buildings, primarily along Grand Avenue in downtown Phoenix, to artist studios and live/work spaces.
Since late 2001 when she returned to painting after nearly a decade’s hiatus, Moore has channeled her efforts and ample talent into honing her technical proficiency with paint and paintbrush. According to the artist, she “wanted to learn to paint before she died” in order to fully realize a vision for her artwork.
In addition to attending life drawing classes once or twice weekly (she and Zahn organize these classes for downtown Phoenix artists), she has taken painting courses at the Scottsdale Artists’ School. Specifically, she took a flower painting class because of her love for flowers and interest in gardening (she has christened her studio space “Weird Garden”). She actively reads and researches a variety of subjects that influence her art and make their way into her paintings with a rich palette and through a curious synthesis and juxtaposition of imagery.
“When I read about nature I find myself in awe of the incredible, beautiful, and complex systems found there,” says Moore. “While at the same time shocked and repelled by that side of nature biologically intent on survival at all costs, usually at the expense of some smaller, weaker, or unsuspecting creature or through some bizarre, complex, genetically driven chain of events.”
Yet, she is also fascinated and amused by this macabre side of nature (i.e., the female mantis that eats the head of her mate in the midst of reproduction, finishing the sex act with a headless partner), knowing that we are a part of this “beautiful, bizarre and, yet tragic, natural cycle.” She also acknowledges a fascination, awareness, and communion with death due to the profound and lasting impression made upon her at age eleven when her infant sister passed away.
Of particular interest currently is a group of paintings from 2003 that support Beatrice Moore’s emergence from her self-imposed cocoon and validate the spreading of her wings as a painter.
Moore doesn’t officially title paintings, but does assign a working title to each. In Untitled (Butterflies in Love), two richly adorned hybrid creatures appear suspended just above clouds that still seem to be of this world. A different realm is suggested by theatrically draped garlands of flowers, as are the joy and ecstasy of being in love and lust. They foretell a short-lived love and impending death, as garlands of flowers are used in funerary activities in different cultures throughout the world.
The creatures’ butterfly wings are intricately painted with a vivid palette that is present in each of Moore’s works. The creature on the right, with a more muted, yet more intricate wing patterning, is enjoying its status as the object of the gaze of the creature with beautiful wings resembling peacock feathers on the left. The masks, as in other Moore paintings, indicate human attributes with human expressions of love, joy, encouragement, and pleasure.
In Untitled (St. Karolina), Moore creates a complex scenario with references to death and femininity conflated with tongue-in-cheek references to religion in a stage-like setting. Though not religious, Moore is fascinated by sacred objects like nativity scenes and reliquaries.
In this painting, a butterfly with a female human head topped with a crown of thorns is being burned alive at the stake with flames rising from a pile of gathered flowers. Big pink birds with flower heads bear witness to the fiery event. Above the centered figure, is a spider – a predator for butterflies – waiting for the tortured creature to cross over into the realm it guards. Other onlookers include ghost-like butterflies, perched above a draped garland of pink flower-covered skulls, again delineating the earthly from the otherworldly. The clustered orchids framing the scene show Beatrice’s newly acquired technical prowess, while making overt female sexuality references.
Moore pulls out all the stops in the monumental Untitled (Girl Pulling up Dress), a complex work that juxtaposes female sexuality and power with the dominance of humans and their ravaging of the environment. Against a blue curtain backdrop, a cross between a Barbie and a cupie doll figure commands center stage, mesmerizing a variety of hybrid creatures. The animals’ faces have been replaced with those of humans or dolls indicating subjugation. Along with mushrooms shaped like breasts and various phallic shaped objects springing up from the earth, all creatures great and small seem eroticized by the doll’s lavish costume and naked sexuality, as well as intent on sneaking in for a closer peek. A baby in a basket is suspended above the partially exposed girl as it emerges from a birth canal-shaped garland, again dominated by beautifully painted, feminine orchids. The garland again delineates the earthly scene below from a more mystical realm above. Is this an empowered woman with tantalizing feminine mystique arising from her nudity, or is she increasingly vulnerable to the advances of creatures lured by the sensuality of flesh?
Arguably Beatrice’s most accomplished work to-date is Untitled (Dying Baby). It was first exhibited at last fall’s Chaos Theory exhibition at 3-Car Pileup. Utilizing an image of a centuries-old nativity figure as a reference, Moore exquisitely renders the figure of the child in a funerary setting. The baby’s porcelain skin is highlighted with rouge that harkens back to a previous time’s vitality and echoes the pinks and reds in the floral bouquet at his feet, as well as the ornate draped curtain closing like a veil in the background.
The curtain swags are adorned with a crucifix and large flowers that change color as death moves from left to right. The flower on the right has a glittering golden center, while the other’s brilliance has been snuffed out. The embroidered, brocaded blanket covering the child has the Sacred Heart of Jesus and other milagro objects attached.
The painting, like other Moore paintings, is reminiscent of work by Mexican surrealist Leonora Carrington (1917- ) in its haunting and mystical setting. An interesting feature of the painting is the landscape that is disappearing as the curtain is drawn by one of Moore’s butterfly/human hybrid creatures.
In discussing this aspect of the painting, Beatrice reveals her affinity for Spanish Baroque artist Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) by referring to him as “one of the greatest painters who ever lived.” Her research uncovered a book in which the 17th century artist describes a painting technique that Moore in turn utilized in this painting. Beatrice considers frames integral to many of her paintings. In this work, the frame serves as a casket for the dying child.
Beatrice Moore claims to have fallen in love with the medium of oil painting. She likes to be “able to see the paint,” and knows that diverse textures created by various brushstrokes attract the viewer’s eye.
In an age of instant gratification and highly prized simple answers, her paintings are complex vignettes requiring a closer look, and, as successful contemporary art should, they ask the viewer for a reaction and a personal interpretation. They are amalgamations of her fascinating life experiences, multifaceted interests, and fantastic imagination, and are spiked with a quirky dark element and a splash of often tongue-in-cheek humor.
Beatrice Moore’s paintings rock my world, but what I find even more moving is her focused energy, fortified resolve, and humble acknowledgement of the need to learn foundational elements and other technical aspects of painting. As a chrysalis transforms into a butterfly, so to will Beatrice Moore realize the vision she has for her art while being propelled into a higher realm as an artist.
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