Select Catalog Essays

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"These configurations could be taken as idiosyncratic constellations devised by some ancient or even extraterrestrial navigator as an aid to a grand journey through a world where microscopic and macroscopic views are as one, leading us to the place where we can see how the flexibility and flux of primordial pulsation start to breed the architecture of consciousness."

—Mark Van Proyen, “Aerial Luminations,” California State University, Stanislaus, 2006

Moment’s work “reminds us of what all religions remind us: there is a world beyond the body, and the soul can transcend.  Beyond the melodrama of the splattered, runny paint and the cascade of palms, moreover each hand is a positive declaration, an “I am here” – better, “I am still alive” – impressed upon the universe.”   

—Peter Frank, Joan Moment: “Paintings, Works on Paper and Wall Installations, 1993-2003,” Huntington Beach Art Center, 2003 

“Her language is a series of romantic signs; her images are active nouns and passive verbs that are wrapped in the luminous adjectives and adverbs of her color and gesture. Hers is not only a votive spirituality, but an earthy often highly sexual energy…Her paintings grope toward an alchemy that will defeat the heavy gravity of the earth and allow for unencumbered transit through the air."

—Christopher French, catalog essay for exhibition at Rena Bransten and California State University, Sacramento, 1985

“Distilled into their essences, Moment’s forms become archetypes of human knowledge and experience, imbuing the work with a spirituality that is not conventionally religious but recognizes that magic is to be found residing beyond mere appearance…Moment’s cultural investigations have led her to discovering the magic of transforming raw materials, the ritualistic process of giving form to paint and the desirability of painting artlessly while not denying the time and environment in which she lives.”

—Judith Dunham, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, 1984

“The artist has linked the intuitive impulses found in most contemporary abstract painting to the strong traditions of naïve art through the repetition of pattern that becomes ritualistic and spiritually liberating. She is keenly aware of how each painting demands to be painted, and allows her unconscious to play a major role in the development of images and patterns.”

—Roger Clisby, Crocker Art Museum, 1981

“Joan Moment’s paintings are an immutable paradise of invented forms; her landscapes are night visions of tropical gardens, underwater worlds, lush oases, inhabited by fantastic creatures – haunting forgotten Edens in which familiar flora and fauna are transformed into exotic, otherworldly creatures existing in a place devoid of time or events.”    

—Marcia Tucker, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974