To the modern eye the stones of the great Neolithic tomb at Newgrange, county Meath, Ireland, are covered by signs and symbols that might appear to be meaningless and arcane. Nevertheless I am convinced not one line was mere decoration. Every hammered groove meant something to this primitive ancestor. I can not prove this, I just know it.

Alas I find myself on the foreshore of what is fairly deep water. For there has always been a problem defining the frontier between symbols and signs, where does one end and the other begin? The Latin Signum mutates into the useful words, signature, ensign and signify. Likewise symbol, from the Greek Simvallo, meant to put together, but has now come to mean, that which represents something. Signs just tell you where to go whereas symbols are a metaphor for something more, a visible sign of something invisible. Painting is one of the few arts that can explore and exploit these visual distillations. The painter today is free like his ancestors to enrich his signs and symbols with meaning and significance, both subconscious and conscious.

Nick Moore starts off by using his own symbols and signs that don’t require instruction, they can be interpreted in
many ways, but they all relate to his personal and sophisticated self. He is the last person who wants to reveal his private world. In other words to shoot down in flames the very machine that he is aiming at getting on board. He is certainly not aiming at being dead enigmatic, and flying in that bucket shop of concocted Beckmanesgue Sloane St surrealism.
Sensibly and courageously Nick Moore has attempted to resolve his own personal experience of tragedy, the loss of his mother in appaling circumstances, in the manner of what he is best at, as he puts it, ‘by finally coming to some painting terms with her death’. He admits to playing with symbols, some he realises are quite arch, however he feels that by dealing in this way he covers, in a very British fashion, his real pain and regret with humour.

Eric Newton ( the famous critic of yesteryear) often spoke
of paintings ‘having something to say’, as if they could talk ! The expression is redolent with danger, one can not explain or talk about one art in terms of another. One can intimate but not describe. Regardless of every warning the Arts are drowning in a sea of verbiage, so I for one am not going to be caught in the act.

Despite the edicts of the Neo Iconoclasts, Nick Moore is full of visual ideas and hope, and what is wrong with such rare assertion today? He relishes in signs and symbols that are condensed from experience, plenty that are private and sensibly arcane.

Nick Moore paints in collaboration with his heart and his head. He loves painting and above all he loves everything that painted image alone can do.

John Craxton 1999