Journeyman - The Art Of Chris Moore
(2000 - Paper Tiger)

Smaller, more square-ish, than usual, at a little more than 8-by-10-inches. The book seems first meant to hold an interview with the artist, conducted by his friend Stephen Gallagher, to tease out the anecdotes, techniques and life-details that the taciturn individual would leave unrevealed if left to his own devices. I feel the book steered toward more negative space with the top-&-bottom margins totaling more than three inches, perhaps taking space that could have been utilized presenting many of the images a bit bigger than they are allowed to be here. The book has 128 pages with 30 of those gathering together multiple smaller images and 90 with featured large reproductions (20 of those being full-bleeds). Many of the 'large' pages are used to present 16 pieces that are allowed to grow across the central gutter, and only two completely flunk out by mis-negotiating the distortion there. Science Fiction rules the day here, but his creations for other genres and purposes get their share of display as well. The captions deliver for each the title, size (plus metric), medium, creation-year, author & publisher (if a book cover), frequently along with a pithy anecdote from the artist. A few errors crept into those captions and was particularly un-forthcoming with a pair of paintings that had been utilized on re-issues of the stories they graced, but with the strange publisher choice to swap them for each other. JOURNEYMAN stands as the best presentation of Chris Moore's collected paintings, but the earlier volume of his works (shared with Peter Elson) called PARALLEL LINES should be considered worthy as well, with only four images that repeat from here.