Q&A w/ Bryan Anthony Moore

How would you describe your studio?

My studio is 330 square feet. I made it by utilizing two bedrooms, opening a wall between them, painting, installing new window coverings, converting two bedroom closets into built-in shelving units, and removing shag carpet, replacing it with bamboo flooring. I did all of the work myself. I also refinished, repurposed, refurbished and built nearly all of the studio "furniture" installing wheels or sliders on each piece. The pride of place goes to a streamline deco rattan desk and chair circa 1935, that I lovingly stripped of brown paint and restored to mahogany splendor. I cleaned up a vintage maple drafting table for drawings and watercolors. I built two tabourets using repurposed glass, MDF, paint and chrome baker's shelves. I put a large double stack of flat files on industrial wheels and installed a worktop with glass on top to create a standing desk/pallet/workstation. I have a large sit-down work table, a large easel and a generous painting wall, with every space utilized efficiently, while maintaining flexibility through portability of furniture. Other than a gifted taxidermied goat mount, a dartboard and a couple of Mayan masks, the walls are mostly bare to maintain an open space for creativity. No part of the room is allowed to feel crowded or stifled. A turntable and a few hundred thrifted records provide a soundtrack to my workday. The studio library contains many art, natural history, poetry, anatomy, history and children's picture books, it also houses a 1980's focused comic book collection. The space includes a curiosity cabinet with crystals, seashells, sculptures, etc. The standout feature of the studio is a 1980's focused toy collection that asserts itself by adding bright colors and inspiration.


How does your studio play into your work?

The rubber dinosaurs, Godzillas, resin anatomical models and other items have certainly been used as references and/or inspiration in some of my work. I have done an installation of dinosaur and King Kong toys and displayed certain items alongside artworks as well.

I had to be an adult in my childhood years so to compensate I definitely enjoy retaining my inner child as an adult. I love puppets, toys, books and music and surround myself with my passions that inspire and inform me. Having a dedicated, sacrosanct art space is so helpful if one can make it happen.
Mechanically, my studio makes larger paintings possible and serves to further my practice, house my work and facilitate focus.


How does your background influence the body of work you have been creating, in general or specifically, for your solo exhibition at MING Studios?

I am an avid reader of historical books and articles. I liked copying the engraved wrinkles from 19th century portraits of Washington when I was 13. I liked looking at Paul Revere illustrations in Little Golden Books when I was 5. I enjoyed Thomas Nast's political cartoons in my school social studies texts as a child. . . his illustrations like Boss Tweed's head on a vulture's body clutching ill gotten spoils. This led to an appreciation of engravings and art that challenged the powerful.

I grew up wandering the undeveloped foothills that were a block from my front door. I also hung out at the local river and led a pretty unsupervised life of outdoor appreciation, observing animals and plants, drawing and reading. In my twenties I volunteered at The World Center for Birds of Prey.

At 13 I had a sudden windfall of a few dozen unwanted comic books from a family we knew and I was instantly hooked. I love comic books, especially the era spanning the 1960's to the 1980's.
I read horror, sci-fi and fantasy books from age 10-17 or so, a LOT of them. I also read 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Animal Farm. After that I began reading history and the classics. I have been very interested in mythology and chimeric monsters, centaurs, mermaids, titans and hybrid creatures since my youth. Hand-out coloring sheets of Neptune, Medusa, et. al. and Harryhausen's films such as the various Sinbad movies, Jason and the Argonauts, and The Clash of the Titans were formative in my tastes, as were my oft reread The Chronicles of Narnia books. I grew up watching Nosferatu on the late late show. Seeing Jeff Goldblum play Ichabod vs. the Headless Horseman. Playing with Frankenstein and Dracula magnets, drawing mummys and wolfmen, fearing witches, haunted apple trees and flying monkeys while watching The Wizard of Oz and envying Tarzan his caveman-like life in The Legend of Greystoke. I identified with the early human thrust into contemporary life in the film Ice Man. My favorite school library books were short descriptions of the various Universal monsters, King Kong, Godzilla, and other vintage monster films. The books (The Crestwood Monster Series) featured black and white stills of each monster. My father often asked why I couldn't just draw cars and was always drawing monsters. My uncle once commissioned one of my special dragons for his refrigerator (he loved Dungeons and Dragons).

I grew up enjoying paleo-art featuring dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. I had a large book of Rudolph Zallinger's illustrations and once got a calendar from my aunt that featured Charles Knight's artworks. I now spend a lot of time at natural history museums. I've always enjoyed reading natural science articles and books from contemporary authors like Shubin and Stringer on back to Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. My father once shouted at my aunt for telling me about the theory of evolution. I read encyclopedias.

I've been involved in political issues such as Indigenous People's Day that dealt with fictive versions of Columbus' history. I'm a fan of Howard Zinn. I'm skeptical of top-down histories. I'm a military veteran that served in the Middle East among other places. I washed dishes to support myself in high school. I worked in factories for 8 years, I grew up doing rough carpentry.

Sometimes emotions such as visceral anger from my dysfunctional childhood home, foster homes and school bullying bubbles through into my art in unexpected ways.