ARTIST STATEMENT : MALCOLM R. MOONEY

As an artist, I have assumed a historical responsibility; the act of painting. This responsibility is as if there is a visible time line, which stretches from the first visual delineation to the present visual manifestations. I am in this continuum. I am a part of this history, although present. Artists are a part of a discipline that encompasses those that have gone before and those that will come afterwards. In the meantime, I am here to keep and expand upon the ideas of those of the Renaissance, those of the Impressionists, the Action painters, the conceptual, the Pop artists: those before, in between and those who are to come. I paint to continue this tradition: to add to this tradition and to make it mine.

There are two poles in the tradition of painting. There is the positive energy and there is the negative energy. (this follows the positive and negative in our lives). In my paintings, I am using and transcribing the positive spirit of energy and life, I am creating paintings of my environment: I am drawing meditations and painting abstract imagery.

I have been working as an artist for the past 50 years. My father, a painter and serigraphic printer, was my first teacher. My father employed me, first as an assistant in his studio, Seri-Art Studios, in Yonkers, N.Y. There, I learned the basics of the silk-screen printing trade, from a rack boy to a printer. The ideas of image making stemmed from this initial foundation in the printing field. This experience in my fathers’ printing business prompted my initial steps to follow a career in the visual arts. Throughout elementary and high school I pursued the visual arts. As a Junior High School student, I was continuously selected to exhibit at the Hudson River Museum student shows.
Years later, I would again exhibit at the Hudson River Museum.
However, in the 1960’s I began to devote myself to a career as a professional artist (painter). I obtained a B.F.A, at Boston University in 1979 and an M.F.A. in Studio Arts at California State University at Los Angeles in 1987. I am also a lyricist and musician of avant-garde rock music.