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About Lilies and Kenga1s Moments of Quietness by Raul Cristancho
About Lilies and Kenga1s Moments of QuietnessMaria Moran: Recent works
Painting has always kept a very close relationship with nature. Itcould be said that both complement each other. Is painting the
nature1s mirror? Not necessarily. If landscape is mirrored by
painting, painting is also mirrored by landscape. A picture is, perhaps,
the ideal space for the representation of nature. Forever an illusion,
painting springs up as a shapeless thought, follows a structuring
growing period, and then it either achieves self-sufficient terms or
stops in the way at a given state. It expresses an evolution process.
It shapes a never complete - though still latent - image of the world.
In this sense, Maria Moran has established through her paintings an
intimate conversation with nature. Her close rapprochement to the
vegetable world is outspoken. Painting is her probing tool.
Nevertheless, no mimesis attitude is to be found there. Although
Moran favours pictorial action, she does not attempt embellishing
3picturesquisms2. Rather, her process is mental, of how to perceive
nature and make eyes sensitive by means of accurate, well-aimed
memory-consolidation expressions.
The fragility and ephemeral existence of nature seem to be Moran1s
major aesthetic concern. Vegetable shapes hardly manifest
themselves: they are disclosed in full transformation, either at
ripening or extinction.
There is no interest here for 3impressionistic2 luminescence neither
tropical exaltation. Instead, what persists is awareness of
dematerialization, recreation of shape. In this way, the picture
establishes an organic and metaphorical rapport with nature.
Color is the plastic element on which Moran bases her paintings.
Just like Hockney, she reminds us that the issue of painting is not
mere recreation of pictorial genders but a matter of aesthetic
sensitivity, and a reflective attitude before the world. Thus, her
painting is not an unconcerned autonomous fact. Moran commits her
art to all that is essential in life, the natural laws governing our
destiny: growth and extinction, the consolidation and
dematerialization of all living things.
Raúl Cristancho
Santafe de Bogota, May of 1998
Maria Moran: Recent works
The order in which Maria Moran is developing this new stage of her
work, always based on a very detailed analysis of nature, reveals her
rigor in the meticulous progress of her research concerning both the
physical qualities of matter and the psychological impacts of color.
It is above all important to point out that part of these analyses take
place during her long travels around countryside lands and mountains
in Colombia, devoting herself, besides indulging in the order
established out there, to selecting and collecting material from flora
which will later become of invaluable help.
In the first works at this exhibition, we can see how she reflects on
her still life 3Flor, mango y copa sobre vidrios2 (3Flower, mango, and
cup on glass2); by means of carefully analyzed color layers, she
creates a geometrical structure that reminds us of the Dutch Master
Piet Mondrian1s 3Still life with ginger gourd2, one of his first of 1911.
These still life paintings usually show us the artist1s studio, her
interests, her passions, the relationship between life and death,
between static and dynamic, between an inside and an outside. Even
in a very particular one, 3Demonios secos de Rosero2, (3Rosero1s dry
demons2), she amazingly succeeds to make a clear description of this
talented writer from Pasto, the owner of an introverted and somehow
distant personality but with a vast and enriching literary work with no
little recognition.
The picture, as its moves from ocher to reds, with some discrete
touches of whites, lets us witness the life process of a flower into the
culminating point at which it, with great dignity, it is finally
immortalized.
In 3Lirio y pitaya con plato mexicano2 (3Lily and pitaya * with Mexican
dish2), the metaphor of life and death is obvious: both the wood in the
floorboard in yellows and ochers which seems to restore the life of
the tree itself and the well-succeeded rapport among the useful
objects in the studio (such as frameworks, a tray) on which the fragile
and impermanent elements (flowers, fruits) will become eternized,
with those delicate blue lilies elaborated with clever drawing
strokes, learn us about the circularity of life, its nature, how
ephemeral it is, and the experience derived from it.
3Eden de Kenga2 (Kenga1s Eden) is the largest canvas in this
collection, the one on which we can actually see the direction that
Maria Moran1s work is taking. Further to a descriptive vision, she
deconstructs a universe compressed in the landscape, in chaos. She
reconstructs that chaos by creating a new structure with tones and
expressions emerging like melodies; they are metaphors of lightness.
There is a close rapport with Chinese painting &endash; in the eyes of the
Chinese people, more involving than the most realistic landscape is
the one that is able to reveal the artist1s true feelings and passion
for space.
She observes nature as a framework and shows it to us as a metaphor
of impermanence: the garden framework denotes ephemeral and
ever-changing life itself. The freehand line drawing maintains its
autonomy over the painting, thanks to the tension established
between motion and color. These are smart decisions in both
expressive fields.
3Tela de lirios2 (Lily Canvas), the last painting in these series, is
perhaps the most precarious work of all in terms of structural
conception and execution. We can appreciate Master Moran1s
intentions here, as well as the outlines to be followed in her work
from now onward. In this evolution of her vision, many are the
questions to be asked about relationships between mankind and
nature, and the power of nature1s effect as a spiritual agent in the
human being1s transformation.
Her intention is clearly stated at having analyzed a single subject for
such a long time in order to make it show so many perspectives, just
as she has asserted it by referring to the Chinese Masters: 3The
search for aesthetic perfection leads us to the search of perfection in
the Universe2.
Mariana Varela
Associated Professor
Department of Fine Arts &endash; National University of Colombia
Santafe de Bogota (Colombia), 1st June of 1998.
Maria Moran©2005