Locks Gallery is pleased to present John Moore: Charcoals, a solo exhibition of recent works on paper by American realist John Moore (b. 1941). Featuring a selection of charcoal drawings created between late 2022 and late 2024, this series continues Moore’s career-long investigation of architectural and industrial landscapes and their connection to memory and time. On Friday, February 14 from 5 to 7pm, there will be an opening reception with a book signing of the recent publication John Moore: Portals (Marshall Wilkes, 2024), which features a comprehensive collection of writing by art historians, poets, curators, and critics responding to Moore’s work.
John Moore is widely recognized for his poetic realist paintings blending realism and illusionism to create precise and evocative compositions. In this latest series the artist returns to drawing with an emphasis on tonal richness and textural depth. These drawings feature subjects ranging from the aging industrial structures of Coatesville, Pennsylvania to the coastal shipyards of Maine and the historical streets of Catalayud, Spain. With his characteristic sensitivity to light and atmosphere, Moore transforms these landscapes into meditative reflections on impermanence and change.
Moore’s charcoal drawings evoke the physical and emotional effects of time on fading structures. These works expand upon the traditions of American realists and precisionist painters, including Charles Sheeler and Ralston Crawford, who likewise explored the geometry and materiality of the industrial world. Like Sheeler’s masterful charcoal studies of factories and Crawford’s depictions of steel mills, Moore’s drawings capture the interplay of shadow, light, and architectural form. They also echo the American tonalists’ interest in mood and the ephemeral qualities of light, recalling works by artists such as Dwight Tryon, whose landscapes conveyed a quiet emotional power. While Moore engages with these historical influences, his ability to merge observed detail with imagined spaces and subtle illusionism lends his work a “distanced eye,” as put by art historian Debra Bricker Balken, that reflects on the passage of time. This interplay between realism and abstraction positions Moore’s drawings as meditations on impermanence, offering a distinctly contemporary perspective that invites viewers to reconsider the enduring resonance of industrial and architectural forms.
Architect Louis Kahn once remarked, “There is beauty in the fact that they are now in repose,” a notion that permeates Moore’s drawings. Through layers of densely worked charcoal, these works convey a tactile sense of the passage of time. This selection of works invites viewers to pause and contemplate the weathered surfaces, fragmented details, and shifting perspectives that imbue his work with cinematic qualities. Moore’s attention to both the monumental and the intimate—whether in expansive industrial facades or small, hidden moments in the woods—offers a profound commentary on the traces of human activity and the enduring beauty of structures in repose.
John Moore (b. 1941) was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri and spent much of his career in Philadelphia. He is the former Gutman Professor of Fine Arts in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as chair of the department for ten years. He previously headed the graduate painting program at Boston University, and taught at the Tyler School of Art of Temple University and the University of California, Berkeley. At Washington University he completed his BFA and went on to receive an MFA from Yale University. Moore was elected to the National Academy of Design and has been honored several times by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His paintings are included in major collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and many others. The artist has exhibited with the gallery since 1976.
This exhibition will be on view in the first floor gallery and open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 10am – 6pm.
