Meet the Artist
"I am a contemporary artist specializing in bold, clean colors and highly textured drama. I love playing with colors, and draw my inspirations from graphic delectables intermixed with nature."
The viewer is immediately captured by the boldly joyful colors and dancing movement of Cara Moran’s paintings. The layers of shiny paint are applied with instinctual flair using the timeless impasto technique.
Cara Moran has always been in love with the way that color and form can speak. She grew up as the daughter of a successful artist, Charles H. Pabst, watching and learning, fine-tuning her inherited talent. While obtaining a BA in Art History at Arizona State University, she enjoyed taking in every interesting detail about the origins and cultures from which art pieces have emerged.
As a student, she also apprenticed with modern artist Beth Ames Swartz, "who has always been a source of inspiration for color and expression within my work." While absorbing the diverse approaches of contemporary and historical artists, Cara developed a style all her own, capturing the fleeting beauty of the natural world with the quickest of impressions.
“A flower is fleetingly sweet, fresh, cheerful, and purely natural. There is nothing contrived in the way in which it bursts forth, making an always-welcomed appearance. There is perfect order and joy in its constant cycle of life. Perhaps this is why I was naturally drawn to capturing them as my main source of inspiration. Clouds, in all their fresh and constant movement, make such an incredible backdrop. My eyes will never tire of these portraits of time. Our Creator is unspeakable, ever-changing beauty, and I can only capture a seconds-worth of this eternal order in my own way. I am thankful for such a wonderful privilege.”
Moran’s work has been enthusiastically received, exuding an energy and joy that her public finds compelling. Using almost exclusively palette knife, the texture she achieves makes her work three dimensional. But it’s the fourth dimension, the intangible quality that captivates the viewer and holds him spellbound.
Growing up in the Arizona desert, Cara moved from Phoenix to Prescott, Arizona, in 2000. She has since returned to Phoenix where her primary job is raising her six children. “They provide my greatest inspiration. Their innocence and beauty bring me such a depth of hope and joy. I want to speak this joy in my paintings.”
Interview
Capturing Beauty
Interview by Marie Picard
June 2015
We met with the beloved Cara Pabst Moran before the unveiling of her biggest collection ever and it was refreshing! Here are some of her revelations about her art:
Why do you do what you do? How do you build your technique?
“I love to paint with the technique I use; smearing a palette knife piled with bright green onto a juicy pink is a huge rush for me. I just do it. It's who I am.”
What is the role of an artist? What do you want people to feel and experience when they look at your pieces?
“Identifying and celebrating the beauties of life is the artist's true calling. I like to do this by highlighting nature's connectedness, movement, life, and color. We are all powerfully connected, and it really is quite beautiful to realize this.”
Any artist that had an impact in your work?
“Picasso and Matisse's ability to create powerful emotion in the most simplistic and striking way has always appealed to me. Although, being female, I'm put off by their grotesque and somewhat brutal portrayals of women and like to focus on natural landscapes at this point in my career.”
What does the future hold?
“In the future, I plan to focus on subjects and colors that are more ethereal and spiritual, but still in keeping with my simplistic and sculptural palette knife technique.”
Cara Pabst Moran, Color and Expression:
Cara is what we could qualify today of a “Modern Fauvism” a painting movement from the early twentieth-century. This era was qualified by, artists whose works emphasize very strong colors and thick texture over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. Cara’s work presents an emotional experience capturing the vibrant beauty of the natural world. She takes her inspiration from her six children that feed her work with hope and joy.