Joe Moorman: A Southern Visionary Risen from the Delta

Complementing the narrative thrust of his paintings, the nostalgic texts on Moorman's website have a literary flavor that reminds one of southern writers like Harry Crews and Dorothy Allison. His prose resonates with plainspoken poetry, as he spins the tale of how a devout local woman known as Sister Ward gently chastised him and a friend for throwing rocks at bluebirds when he was a boy, saying, "Especially you, Joseph Moorman, with a name like you have. You're young now, but you'll be grown before you know it and off on a mission spreading the Gospel."

Moorman says that when he left home for college he "put organized religion behind me," but adds "given the role of fundamentalism around the world, I think some of what I experienced as a Mormon growing up has relevance and should be explored." And strong spiritual commitment of a less conventional kind still comes across when he states, "No matter how much technical skill I acquire in the coming years, I will still be working in the tradition of the evangelical southern folk artist."

It is just this self-awareness however, that distinguishes Moorman from so-called "outsider" artists, even when he paints a deadpan memory of his grandfather drinking a beer in a rubbled yard, while trash burns in a rusty barrel and the family goat strolls by, or conjures up an expressionistic vision of the golden statue of The Angel Moroni atop the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.

Indeed, hot young figure painters like Dana Schutz and Jules de Balincourt, currently all the rage in the New York art scene for their ironic appropriations of the outsider attitude, should surely envy Joe Moorman's knockout combination of honest passion and genuine painterly panache.

-Peter Wiley, Gallery & Studio, September/October 2006, New York.

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