Carl E. Moore, They Shot Another Black Man Today, Neon Letters, 70 x 20. One of many pieces in The Revolution Has Been Televised at The New Gallery || Autumn Maczko TAS

Carl E. Moore, a fine artist from Memphis TN gave a lecture on Feb. 8 2023 to talk about his exhibit on display in The New Gallery.

Moore is a painter and graphic designer and shared his painting process and his practice techniques with students, faculty, and guests.

Moore spoke about some of his major influences Gil Scott-Heron, a musical artist and poet. It was from one of Scott-Heron’s poems, “The Revolution Has Not Been Televised”, that Moore got the name for his exhibit at Austin Peay. Moore is quoted saying, “the revolution is live” and it’s “living against the powers that be”. He doesn’t want to be limiting in what can be a revolution as to him anything that’s for the benefit of mankind is a worthy cause. 

Moore talked through many of paintings included in the exhibit and his process for creating them. In Protests and Fire, Moore intentionally wanted the painting to be bold and bright. He made sure the flame did not consume the background and that viewers would be able to see the location as a city street with the light poles and electricity lines. He uses reference images to keep the people anatomically correct and uses what he calls “multi-canvas gridding” to work through a composition.

While Moore showed he was very thorough in his planning process by meticulously sketching, drawing, and then painting, he talked about the many changes that his paintings would go through either with color or compositional balance. Many times Moore would change the painting once the colors were down, repainting an area more than three times, to be able to get that perfect balance he was looking for.

After the lecture and questions, Moore urged students to never stop creating. He told students to keep painting and drawing and that it’s much more about what you paint rather than how you paint it. 

Carl E. Moore’s work can be found at carlemoore.com and to find out when more visiting artists will be in The New Gallery, go to their pages at The New Gallery at APSU on Facebook and Instagram.