Frank Moore (1953-2002)

Like a window into a dream, Frank Moore’s Patient depicts a poetic and otherworldly alternate universe, replete with both fanciful and weighty imagery. A half-submerged hospital bed fills the canvas, bathed in a blue glow, its pillows soaring out of the water like volcanic islands. Next to the bed, a blood bag IV tube snakes into the water.  The liquid cascades down in a waterfall at the edge of the bed, perhaps a sly nod to Frederic Edwin Church’s Niagara Falls that Moore admired. Patient is representative of Moore’s desire for the viewer to look and look again, to find new visual discoveries and themes that accompany his artistic choices. In Patient, time has been compressed, and all four seasons are represented. Delicate snowflakes drift across the scene along with red and yellow falling leaves and chirping songbirds that usher in the warm glow of spring. Another autobiographical detail is that Frank Moore’s own name and blood type are written upside down onto the blood bag.  Much of Moore’s work, including Patient, references the insufficiency of the health care industry and his personal battle with AIDS, which took his life in 2002 at the age of 48. Moore was an integral member of the group Visual AIDS, and played a crucial role in creating the looped red ribbon as a symbol of the movement. Patient thus is like a journal of Moore’s battle with the disease.  Almost allegorical in tone, Moore’s work has the unique ability to fuse representational painting, thorny political topics and a deeply personal narrative together on one canvas.