Ted Moore

Ted Moore (b. 1974) is an artist, musician, and music educator based in Hesperus, Colorado. He grew up in Washington State, Maryland, Colorado, and Italy, and earned his B.A. in Classics from University of Colorado, Boulder. In addition he has an M.A. and Ph.D. (ABD) in Medieval Studies from University of Toronto, and a Masters in Fine Art from Maine College of Art & Design. As a professional drummer he has performed throughout North America, most recently with the band he co-founded, Mojo Birds. Ted’s career represents the confluence of art and cra!, composition and performance, and languages, literature, and history. 

Ted’s artwork is inspired by the landscape, cultures, and history of the Southwest U.S., with a particular focus on trees and wood. Trees measure the passage of time and seasons of life, creating ecological and cultural records; Ted’s art addresses layers of history embodied in both nature and everyday cultural items. His work is characterized by realism, monochromism, and the co-optation of centuries-old European art and cra! forms. He combines photorealistic ink painting with historical European cabinetry forms such as retablos, triptychs, reliquaries, writing desks, apothecary cabinets, and cabinets of curiosity, mediating between the known and the unknown, the mundane and the transcendental. His research as a medievalist informs his ability to adapt traditional visual vocabulary to a contemporary aesthetic in order to explore an ecological ontology, a different way of navigating conceptions of what is transcendent, what is present, and how those two meet. By juxtaposing devotional and organizational objects and natural objects, he seeks to overturn anthropocentric and dualistic thinking to convey a sense of interobjectivity. His work allows objects to be traditional as well as ahistorical, products of both nature and human labor.