This artist has taken time during the pandemic to closely observe the minutiae of nature

Tom Atton Moore is a textile artist with an eye for the abstract. After graduating from the London College of Communication with a degree in illustration, Moore purchased a tufting gun online and began creating rugs - functional pieces - that serve as tangible representations of often overlooked moments in time. The wilting of a Magnolia tree or the swirling of chemicals in a pond. In 2020, he presented his first solo exhibition, Dear Magnolia, at Jermaine Gallagher Showroom in London. In 2021, he exhibited his second show in London, It’s Good To Be Home, at FUMI Gallery. This year, until February 20, 2022, he will make his US debut at BC in Los Angeles with the presentation of Eden.

Eden is presented by BC - a multi-disciplinary creative office in Los Angeles. In this exhibition, the artist responds to the question, ‘When the world goes quiet, where does the mind go’? He answers this boldly through woollen rugs with abstract shapes and forms dressed in stirring colour. While living in the locked-down English countryside during the pandemic, he found himself inspired by the riveting -  often overlooked - minutiae of nature.

In a lane, and alternate world, of his own, Moore is an artist whose work resists definition. His rugs serve not as pieces of craft or design, but as tangible representations of real feeling. In this latest series of works, Eden, Moore speaks the patient language of a garden pond.

While the outside world was clinging to the big picture, Moore was honing in on the small, almost zen-like, details of the serene landscape around him. He soon came to realize that while nothing was happening, in fact, everything was. He began to notice how the meticulous movements of nature created a kind of calm choreography—the way a slight breeze would topple a line of dominoes down the spine of a tree.

In this stillness, Moore observed how a chemical released into a pond would tapdance atop the water’s surface, spiralling little infinities before settling to the bottom. He took note of these fluid formations, how they ebbed and flowed, day after day until they finally disappeared behind the liquid curtain of the water.

The seven woollen rugs of this series set out to celebrate the fortune-telling formations found in Hannibal’s Pond. Hand-tufted, latexed, dried, pinned, bound, and shaved with sheep shearing clippers — Moore's process takes up to two weeks or more for every rug. What begins as a moment in time transforms into a collage, a feeling, and finally, something you can hold with your own two hands. Each piece in this latest collection is roughly 7-by-5-feet and is made of vintage dead-stock yarn.