By Janice K. Neal-Vincent, Ph.D.
Contributing Writer
“I do what God tells me to do. I always put God first. I pray before I start. If it’s a different work, I say, ‘send one of Your artists in me. Give it character, life, [and] meaning.’”
That’s how Monique Moore described how she comes about her visual art forms. She referred to God as her “Truest Inspiration” for her works. “There is no artist greater than He. He takes the ugly, the bad, and He’ll make something out of that [and it will] be beautiful,” she related glowingly.
So inspired, Moore’s artistry comes in a variety of forms, including caricatures, water color paintings, mixed media, collages, landscapes, mechanical things like airplanes and cartoons and animations.
But the artist specializes in acrylic oils, pastels, water color, charcoal, graphite pencils, prism color pencils, pen and ink drawings for shading effects, and dark wash. She clarified “dark wash” as a pencil she puts a paint brush behind to give a water color effect to the pencil drawing.
Reflecting on her “calling from God,” Moore claimed, “I died stillbirth when I was born. I had been raped, kidnapped at three months old, held hostage in the house with my mom and brothers…I channeled my pain, my relief, my struggle, my drive in my art.”
Moore confessed that from these episodes, God gave her a testimony: “I tried to figure out how I was going to move from point A to point B. In my testimony, I tell others how I got to that point.”
Now residing in Clinton, Moore described the Virden Addition house in Jackson that she grew up in as “bad.” She claimed her mother to be a “hoarder.”
Accordingly, “We slept on piles of clothes in the bed. We survived all types of violence every night as we lay on the floor. I was writing my music and people were feeling what I was going through. In my head I was capturing every moment in my drawings.”
The artist recalled her Walton Elementary School days and stated that for an entire year she was hospitalized. “I just wanted to go home to my family. I found out I just wanted to draw, to keep moving, and to keep happy. My mama thought I was hallucinating because I was on so much medication. She thought I was tracing the pictures I drew.”
But Moore explained that she drew the objects she saw from the television. It was at that moment that her mother started buying her coloring books. “She wanted to see if I could draw pictures of the television characters inside the coloring books. Principal Grier then put me in an art class and I started winning different contests,” Moore recalled.
As third place winner of a statewide contest, Moore drew a photo of a pregnant woman, thereby depicting one side of a fetus that was graduating and the other side deformed. The woman was shooting up. The fetus had smoke in the lungs and puffy eyes. Tombstones surrounded the fetus and there was no graduation, as the baby didn’t have the opportunity to live.”
The artist noted that she was 13 then, the age when her teachers noticed she had a gift, “because I absorbed things on a whole new elevation and drew the pregnant lady from a magazine. I used my brain to manipulate the fetus.”
A prodigy in her own right, Moore commented that she would be last in class to read because she read backwards, compared to the rest of the children. “Teachers looked at learning as one way (unilateral) and if they [her teachers] weren’t creative, they missed out on my interpretation of things that kept me evolving,” she said.
Though she graduated from Hinds Community College, the artist noted the above discovery to hold true throughout her formal school training. Admitting that it was good to receive formal training, Moore clearly stated that her reliance on “Divine inspiration” was what mattered for her artistry.
Referring to herself as “a detailed artist,” she said she doesn’t deviate from the blueprint unless directed by the client. There is, however, a caveat: “I’ll draw whatever a person wants, but I have to be inspired by God to do it. Once it’s complete, the client looks at the picture and tells me, “You’ve got a gift.”
Relying on her gift, Moore asserted that she needed people to give her an idea and to let her build upon it. “People feel the art when they see it. Most tell me I capture the soul in the eyes. I capture the essence of the person at that very moment…. The eyes are the heart to the soul,” she spoke confidently.
Since 1988, Moore has earned substantial income from her artistry and presently operates from her home. Her dream, however, is “to own my own shop.” Her clientele include everyday people, educators, media outlets, medical professionals, politicians, and many others.
Visual artist Monique Moore may be reached at 601-331-2374.
