Lost in the Lines: Bryan Moore on Art and Healing

Bryan Moore said the first time he showed his psychotherapist his art, he was told to go to art therapy.

Moore had served in the military’s special operations for 23 years, with seven combat tours. He said that since then, he’s experienced PTSD, depression, and suicidality. Art, he said, helps him cope. He uses graphite on vellum—a better, stronger alternative to paper that won’t tear under his sharp, precise pencil—to create highly detailed pieces, generally from photographs. Many of those pieces depict scenes from his combat experience.

Moore’s work won the 2015 Veteran Creative Arts Festival, a competition he entered at the recommendation of his art therapist, but he said the recognition isn’t why he does it.

“It’s not for anybody else. It’s mainly for me and it helps me,” he said. “It helps me work through those feelings.”

While art has been his outlet, Moore said he knows that not every veteran will find it as helpful as he did—but he encourages other veterans to try it.

“I try everything that they ask me to try,” he said of his work with different therapists and methods of coping with his mental health. “If they say draw a picture, draw a picture. It doesn’t have to look like anything.”

“One thing doesn’t work for everybody… if you find it and that’s your healing, then that’s it, and you won’t find it unless you try it,” he said.

For Moore, there’s a sense of timelessness that comes with making art. He said he’ll often start working on a project with either a drink in hand or a playlist on in the background, work until it runs out, and then step away. When he returns to the art, he said he often doesn’t even remember the time he spent working on it.

“When I get into that zone, and I’m drawing, I’m in the moment. I’m right here, right now…I don’t think about anything except what I’m doing,” he said.

Although many of his pieces are images from his combat experience, Moore said he really just waits for an image to grab him. Often, he’ll start a piece but not finish it. Just as often, however, he said he’ll feel compelled to do a certain drawing.

Right now, for example, he said he’s working on a picture of his wife’s hands. “There’s just something about her hands that I had to do,” he said.

There’s no forcing art for him, he explained. In fact, he said when he used to make guitars, he instantly lost all interest in the craft when he had to start making them to sell, rather than making them because he enjoyed it and wanted others to enjoy it.

Moore’s highly detailed artistic process not only allows him the space to engage deeply with his subject matter, however; it also creates highly detailed pieces of art that capture the nuance of the moment. He said his switch from paper to vellum was motivated by the precision of his process. He doesn’t use blending tools, just different types of very sharp pencils, meaning there’s no room for a misplaced line. His pencils have to be extremely sharp, Moore explained, and he initially found that he kept tearing the paper. Vellum, he said, is a stronger alternative.

While his creative process is highly personal, Moore said that his work has also proven meaningful to other veterans—something he hopes will be the case for the upcoming Veterans Art Show with JCPRD as well.

“There were a few people at the festival that really got emotional,” he said of the 2015 Veteran Creative Arts Festival. “If it helps one, it’s good, a success.”