For John Moran of Chester, painting is a second career though it’s been a lifelong passion. While he spent most of his adult life farming and working a government job, Moran started taking art classes in his 20s and, upon retirement in 1997, went all in with his painting, earning a masters of fine art in 2006 at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
John Moran’s “Fire on Ice”
Although his paintings almost always suggest a landscape, you can never be quite sure of what to make of them other than that they are distinctly abstract. At the Adkins Arboretum gallery in Ridgely, Journeys Imagined, his current solo show of watercolor, oil, and acrylic paintings is brimming with glowing colors and forms suggesting trees, mountains, clouds, and unidentifiable shapes, both geometric and free form.
To Moran, painting is a method of creating what he calls “visual poetry.” Never fully planning his imagery ahead of time, Moran says he works organically, brushing paint on, removing it and repainting, responding as he goes to the subtle relationships each change brings to the evolving canvas, as if the objects he paints, even inert rocks, are alive.
You can meet the artist in a free reception from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 19, at Adkins Arboretum. Journeys Imagined continues through Feb. 26, adkinsarboretum.org
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