From an early age, Brooker was inspired by his jazz musician brother and the improvisatory aesthetics of bebop. He likened his artistic process to striking a chord on the piano: while the individual notes may be familiar, discovery emerges when they sound together. Here cascading zones of orange and periwinkle are punctuated by sparkling notes of yellow. Brooker also acknowledged his grandmother’s quilts as a source for his harmonic, patchwork-like compositions: “She pieced cloth of varying colors, sizes, and shapes, placed them together, and amazed me with her sensitivity to color, shape, and pattern. I was struck by the resemblance of her abstract designs to Asante Kente cloth.”
Moe Brooker grew up in Philadelphia and earned his BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and his MFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Arts. He held faculty positions at New York’s Parsons School of Design, PAFA, and Moore College of Art & Design. He was also a member of a gospel choir. Brooker’s work is in public and private collections including the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Woodmere.
