Ed Moses
Los Angeles, CA
Ed Moses
Ed Moses (1926-2018) was born in Long Beach, CA. A colorful personality, he was known for his abstract paintings, and for pushing the boundaries of painting and the definition of what it means to be an artist. Moses earned both a B.A. and M.A. from the University of California Los Angeles. Moses, considered a member of the California "Cool School," was among the first artists to exhibit with the storied Ferus Gallery in 1958. His 2013 solo exhibition Yesterday’s Tomorrows, featuring his ‘crackle’ paintings at Brian Gross Fine Art in San Francisco, provided the footage for his video produced by The Artist Profile Archive. He was also interviewed in his Venice, CA studio.
His work can be found in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others.
“EM: I lie so often, at this point I don’t know what the truth is.
SC: Ed, that’s not fair.
EM: I know it. What can I tell you? I’ve told so many lies in my life after a while I started believing them, and I can’t tell fact from - what is the word- fiction?
SC: You’re breaking my heart.
EM (singing): ‘And yesterday’s tomorrow was all that I knew.’
SC: Is that where you got the title for the Brian Gross show?
EM: What was the title?
SC: Yesterday’s Tomorrow.
EM: That’s right.
SC: It’s from a song?
EM: From a song. I don’t know why. I know many, many songs but only three words in each one. Yesterday’s tomorrow.
SC: Okay, can you introduce yourself with your name and occupation, please?
EM: My name is Ed Moses. I’m a painter, not an artist. And I’m not creative, and I don’t express myself. I’m a mutator. I explore. And if I’m lucky, this sort of phenomenal thing, for lack of a better word, we call magic. So I’m from a history of shaman going way, way, way back previous to the cave paintings when man first discovered he existed. How did he discover he existed? Up to that time, he was part of the phenomenal world. There wasn’t any separation from him and the phenomenal world. When he saw his reflection in a pond of water, saw his footprint in sand, at that moment the separation took place. Me, you, me, this. At that time he didn’t realize the blank that was left for him and how he would activate in that situation. And the first thing he did was to leave a mark, a handprint, a scratch in a stone, footprint in sand. He left evidence that he existed.”
Ed Moses - LA STUDIO - 08:19
“If you flop around like a fool in the muck, something might appear. By chance. Then you might expand on that, that’s a clue. But I like when it happens, and I want to do it again, and I keep exploring it.
But how did it happen? We don’t know. I love that. And that’s the area where secret sauce lies.”
