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Doug Moran is an American painter, sculptor and drafter whose work is associated with abstract, contextual minimalism. He is known for his large, constructed paintings, and for conceptualizing the term "wallscape" to describe such works.

Formative Years
Douglas Ray Moran was born May 21st, 1949 in Allegan, Michigan. As a child growing up in rural Michigan, Moran spent winters building model airplanes and making wood objects. Constructing engineered objects taught Moran about the purpose of each discrete piece in the whole, such as the ribs and spars of model airplanes, with their specific engineered functions carrying specific loads. He also watched his father fully renovate a hundred-year-old farmhouse, and made note of the underlying structure and components of the dwelling: things like rafters, studs, and plaster and lath. This attention to the physical makeup of human spaces in relation to human experience later came to inform and inspire many of works.

In his early education, Moran attended a one-room schoolhouse for the first years of his education. He graduated from Otsego High School.

Moran enrolled at Western Michigan University, initially planning to become an engineer. While an undergraduate, Moran’s trajectory into art was influenced by revelatory interactions with two of his instructors.

A professor of his in descriptive geometry noted that Moran excelled at drawing, and asked what he wanted to be. Moran replied that he wanted to design cars.

“Well, that's a pipe dream. Individuals don't design cars in the United States of America. What you're going to do is you're going to end up being on a team of people that design a dashboard. Or you're going to be assigned the window crank handle. Or you're going to be assigned the rear-view mirror. Something like that.”

This conversation led Moran to explore other options and change his major to Fine Art.

A second encounter was with a former nun, who told Moran that she greatly regretted not following her dreams. The conversation solidified Moran’s certitude that being an artist was his true passion, and that he was determined to follow it.

Moran graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1972, and was awarded a Master of Fine Arts in Stone Lithography in 1974, also from Western Michigan University.

Wallscapes - Miami and Costa Mesa
Moran moved to Miami in 1975 and took up a teaching position at Miami-Dade Community College. In his first exhibitions, Moran drew substantial critical acclaim. His work, “MCRP/Filter Patch” won the 17th Annual Hortt Memorial Competition & Exhibition at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of the Arts in 1975. The Miami Herald’s Art Editor wrote, Moran, a 26-year-old Michigan artist on the faculty at Miami-Dade Community College’s south campus, has caused flurries of excitement since his arrival here last year. His five-by-seven-by-nine-foot mixed-media construction, MCRP/Filter Patch, won first prize in the Hortt Memorial Competition last spring. A Decoy series encaustic painting was picked up by Joseph Hirshhorn, and a Duck Blind canvas wall piece was purchased by the Fort Lauderdale Museum.

Being named Best in Show at the Hortt competition helped catapult Moran to the attention of local art collectors and curators.

Betty Corcoran Greenberg Gallery. Betty Corcoran saw my drawings when I first arrived at the college in 1975. She scooped them up, took them with her, framed them, and gave me one of my first one-man show at a commercial gallery. She's the one that sold the work to Joseph Hershberg. – Doug Moran, interview 12/22/23. Works completed during 1975 and continuing into 1992 explore the built environment, specifically walls, drawing parallels between the structure of shelter and the structure of human experiences that together comprise a human’s sense of place. Moran’s approach to this sense incorporates the complexity of materials used in construction into a deceptively minimalistic presentation which showcases the formal, linear relationships through sequential shapes and colors. In 1979, Moran was called to Santa Ana, California, and commissioned to design and execute the front central exterior wall of Standard Concrete Materials, a new office building. This is the first work in which Moran executed his perspective of “wall as painting” or wallscape. “Industrial Façade” measures 20 feet by 50 feet, is signed, dated, and copyright set forth as an original work of art. Therefore, it is a building as a painting. It's a painting as a building. – Doug Moran, interview 12/22/23.

Moran’s paintings have clear relationships to architecture with parts like doors, windows, roofs, fences and floors. They are just as clearly not copies of existing structures but composites and inventions that read as paintings. Moran uses his experience as a carpenter to build complex, exquisitely crafted frames or “stretcher bars,” sometimes emulating wall studs. Often he covers up much of this work with painted canvas and other surfaces that look rather like Californian exteriors. – Susanne Muchnic. “University Exhibits Keep Diversity Alive.” Los Angeles Times. September 23, 1981.

You have to talk about construction when you talk about Doug Moran’s art. Not a painting’s construction, real construction… - Geer, Suvan. “Doug Moran looks at the substructure of life.” The Orange County Register. January 29, 1988. P41.

Doug Moran’s work is very much about revelation and concealment. At first, the scale and materials of Moran’s constructions seem tough, aloof and inaccessible. But, unlike the minimalists, Moran has left marks which lead one beyond appearances, revealing a sensibility and sensitivity beyond expectation in the work and in the man. Much is made of the “carpenter logic” inherent in these works. Moran intends for us to see through them, questioning how they were built and what joints are hidden beneath a seemingly complex corner or a panel of miniature studs and lath. – Bruce Hiles, Interim Director of Exhibitions, USC; Director of University of Alabama Huntsville Art Museum – quoted in “Wallscapes” I take it all the way back to the walls. Things make sense, if you listen to yourself and watch yourself, eventually, your life makes some sense. And if your work is about your life or your life is about your work, they're going to both make sense. Or they're going to both make nonsense. - Doug Moran, interview 12/22/23. Early Wallscapes were widely exhibited throughout South Florida, receiving much recognition, culminating with its being commissioned under GSA Art and Architecture Program to produce an 8 by 33 foot work for Fort Lauderdale Federal Building and Courthouse in 1978. – George S. Bolge, Director, Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale Florida, July 24, 1979. U.S. General Services Administration. “Stone, Moran, Gelfman: Fort Lauderdale.” 1979. Upon completion of the work for Standard Concrete Materials, Moran returned to Miami to teach winter semester at Miami Dade South Campus, installed a one-man show at Gloria Luria Gallery, a one-man show at Jack Rasmussen Gallery in Washington, D. C., completed a commissioned work, referred to as the “Ross Painting” for Margarita  and H. J. Ross, then the head engineer for Miami International Airport. Moran subsequently resigned his tenured teaching position at Miami Dade Community College to return to his established studio at Costa Mesa, California.

Selected work
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