Archive of the Mendocino Heritage Artists
FRAN MOYER’S CATS
MOYER’S CATS BREACH SPECTRUM OF LOVE
An article by Hilda Pertha, published in the Mendocino Beacon, Thursday, October 2, 1980. Hilda Pertha, one of the Mendocino Heritage Artists, was the first painting teacher at the Mendocino Art Center. She has written extensively on art and artists, including articles in WestArt and ArtForum.
When a serious artist turns to a light mood, something greater than charm becomes visible. This is what occurs when Fran Moyer turns her attention to the subject of cats.
Fran’s love for cats extends to the joy and humor and all the many moods she has observed in these creatures of mystery.
Her means are clear and concise: ink and wash in succinct areas of the total composition in every drawing. The papers are small to medium in size, yet some reach a sense of the colossal.
Fran has to her credit fine art in sculpture, painting and prints, poetry and humorous children’s stories, years of devotion to students, building and woodworking, and now, in 1980, a series of the most delightful expose of cat (and human) spirit I have ever seen.
The aliveness is what strikes me first, then the gaiety, color and humor are manifest.
But aside from what first greets the eye as subject, there is a deeper aspect to Fran’s work here which I want to point out. I am referring to the qualities a mature artist demonstrates in each composition he undertakes, be it as small as a miniature or as large as a mural.
Observe, for example, the superb use of space in each drawing. The “notan” or solid-vs-space areas are clearly defined and in each case unique.
The areas in the two-dimensional sense are elegantly balanced. At the same time, a separate, more subtle space entity in the third dimension is felt, and the third dimensional objects have very comfortable areas in which to exist.
The shapes are convincing whether the cat form is stretched out in extreme activity or at rest. The involvement of the cat watching or pursuing its prey gives these works their remarkable variety as an exhibit.
At the same time, each one is intensely individual and holding interest far more than just as a cat picture.
Human female nudes interspersed among the cats give another delightful dimension.
Moyer’s drawings go beyond the usual cat concept which many artists have exploited. They are genuine works of art.
Take, for example, a composition in which three red-orange cats are finding a spot to rest on a green rug. The colors dance, with the wall behind softly striped in yellow-green on yellow ochre. Each shape is exciting to the eye, yet holds its place within the rectangular format. The cat on the right sits tall with the line of the back at an acute angle to the right vertical side of the picture. On a level place with him, a second cat crouches, their respective tails forming a curve in harmony with the respective shape of the cat, each tail taking a lively part in the movement inherent in the composition. The third cat, smaller as it recedes into the rear of the space, also forms an acute angle, but this time to the upper left horizontal edge of the painting. Tiger-stripes harmonize with the broader vertical stripes of the rear wall as well as the subtly suggested horizontal stripes of the oval carpet, a bluish-green color which perfectly sets off the warm hues of the cats. The tail of the third cat falls vertically near the left edge, with just a suggestion of the acute angle again. The very subtle stripes on the other two cats are there to reward you as you take another look.
In this, as in many other works, the eyes of the cats are focussed on a particular thing, either out of range or in the actual picture. The artist has utilized this cat-phenomenon as a unifying principle compositionally.
These subtleties exist in every one of the drawings, whether a simple silhouette (such as that of the small group of green-eyed black cats on a white field) or the very richly hued ones.
The latter type include the cat in the garden, a truly painterly work.
Here is a world of enjoyment that goes deeply into the visual. And there is another, subtler joy that recognizes the universal values that an original work of art can evoke, that which provided the artist with the special energy humans are gifted with, enhanced by a lifetime of devotion to her craft.
All Boys
Yet, even beyond that, a personal achievement of a different sort speaks out from these works: a looking into that which is meaningful, that which we can love.
MORE CATS
Midge Awoke to Another Unpleasant Day
Adoration
Sandra Hawthorne with Strays
A Passel of Cats
Buster in the Garden
Questions
Someone’s Coming
Victorian Cats
La Belle Epoque
Tuba
Buster and Charlie
Kate and Charlie
Charlie
Dancing with Cats II
Sunspots
Dancing with Cats III
Cloud Cat
Cats
Kitten Awakening
Contemplation
Tippytoes
Easter Bunny
Buster in the Garden
Madge in the Garden
The Bath
Cats in Springtime
Self Portrait with Cat
Moyer’s Cats
Elinor Hayes’ Kitchen Cabinets
The Enneagram Cats of Muir Woods
Fran Moyer’s watercolors illustrate The Enneagram Cats of Muir Woods, by Margaret Frings Keyes. Molysdatur Publications (1990), 78 pages, Paperback.
YOYO
YoYo, and YoYo and the Dogs, are two of a suite of watercolor illustrations (7″ x 5″) by Fran Moyer (1990), for YoYo, an unpublished story by Mendocino writer Joanna Cohen. Private collection.
Temptation
Tomcat
Tomcat is Fran Moyer’s earliest known sculpture.
Her friend Margaret Reynolds tells this story: Fran and I had been friends since we met in Journalism class in 1938, our junior year at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles. In 1949 I lived in a tiny apartment in San Francisco. Fran was an undergraduate at Cal Arts, living in Oakland. She wrote me to say that she thought I needed a cat and that she had one for me. I wrote back that I couldn’t take on the care of a cat and besides I had piranas in my water closet. Then one day soon after, she turned up with the Tomcat, which I can see from where I sit writing this. (Boston, 2008)
LINKS
Fran Moyer: Artwork
Artist’s Statement
Fran Moyer
The Mendocino Heritage Artists
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