Daniel Cooney Fine Art is very proud to announce our second solo show of drawings by Philadelphia based artist Rob Matthews. The exhibition, titled The Middle Ground Vanished consists of large and small-scale drawings of moonshiners, saints, sinners, masked banjo players and a bacchanalian version of Adam and Eve.

Rob continues his exploration of faith and his southern roots with his characteristic precise drawing skills. The centerpiece of this exhibition is The Unmoved Moonshiner, a 6×5’ quasi Cubist drawing on a collage that features the artist strumming a guitar and enjoying a mason jar of moonshine.

The title of the drawing is inspired by Aristotle’s philosophical concept of the “Unmoved Mover” which is the primary cause of all motion in the universe. Aristotle describes the “Unmoved Mover” as “being perfectly beautiful, indivisible and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: itself contemplating”. The Unmoved Moonshiner serves as the heart of the exhibition. As he makes his spirits, travelling musicians and other revelers point to him as their source of truth.

Matthews is a native of Wilson, North Carolina and currently lives in Philadelphia. He received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and has had solo exhibitions at Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, The University of Alabama and Middle Tennessee University among others. This fall he will have a solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. His work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The North Carolina Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the de Young Museum, San Francisco among others.