The British painter Mick Moon, who has died aged 86, had a sophisticated understanding of the functions of an artwork – its ability to represent a range of subjects and experiences while remaining a unique object in its own right. His output ranged from pieces of calico or canvas that had been moulded around studio props, walls or floorboards, to his early “strip paintings” – bands of modulated colour on plastic – and his later semi-figurative works, of which the meaning is ineffable.
In the radiant hues and tactile surface of Embers (1991-92), for example, a glowing, meticulously detailed example of bidriware – metalware originally associated with Bidar in southern India – floats over a green and yellow background, as if some fragment of a transcendent reality has been discovered and translated into acrylic and silkscreen.
