CARA OBER

ARTIST STATEMENT

I find beauty in all the wrong places. In my paintings, a cigarette butt with fuchsia lipstick kiss prints, or a soiled gingham tablecloth, can function simultaneously as holy icon and ironic joke. In the work that I do, I aspire to create the paradoxical, awkward, and enigmatic quality of heartfelt poetry on a graffitied bathroom wall. Unwittingly sitting there, gazing at the words scrawled through random layers of crude, and sometimes, elegant visual meanderings, an epiphany overtakes me. For an instant, I see the world as it really is: gorgeous in contradiction and absurdity, funny in generic blather, and authentic in poignant longing.

Of course, my conception of validity and splendor is entirely subjective, based on my suburban upbringing, my sense of humor, and my own tunnel-vision rebellion. Although I prefer to hint at my opinions rather than dictate, to tease rather than to rant, I intend my paintings to be provocative statements to challenge conceptions of beauty, value, and truth.

As I work, my paintings constantly generate new questions for me, and, as discoveries are made and truths revealed, more questions arise, invalidating earlier judgments. I allow myself to playfully harvest imagery from bourgeois forms of adornment: wallpaper, textiles, tattoos, and graffiti, allowing narratives to organically evolve. Whether heightened metaphor or harebrained anecdote, I craft my visual narratives with the cheapest, tackiest, and silliest ornamental nothings I can find, partly because I believe these ideas are culturally biased and, in part, because they are my birthright.

The formal questions that torture and delight me center on the unique range of marks the viscous media of paint affords me, and the awkward juxtaposition of linear drawing with it. I work in layer after layer, building up a surface, erasing past verdicts, and then looking back on buried decisions with nostalgia. Unselfconscious and hastily made marks intrigue me the most, but must compete with contrasting ordered systems for an argument to be raised on the canvas.

What do I want? Who do I love? How much is too much? How much can I stand to lose? The universal questions, for me, are the most personal, and, the more bewildering the answers to these questions, the more gratifying the search.

BIO

Cara Ober earned an MFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2005 and a BA in fine arts in 1996 from the American University.

A painter, teacher, and writer, Ober exhibits her work locally and nationally, most recently in Washington, DC at The Randall Scott Gallery and Flashpoint, and in Baltimore at Gallery Imperato andMaryland Art Place. In the past year, Ober has exhibited work at The Riviera Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA, Artizen Fine Arts in Dallas, TX, The Karin Sanders Gallery in Sag Harbor, NY, and in The Red Show in Ferrara, Italy.

Cara is a 2006 MD Artist Grant recipient for painting and took second prize in the 2007 Bethesda Painting Awards. Other recent projects include curating "The Jolly Cowboy" at the DC Arts Center as part of the Warhol Grant for Emerging Curators, and "Quintessence" at Paperwork Gallery in Baltimore, MD.

Cara teaches at MICA, Towson, Johns Hopkins, and Loyola College and writes art reviews for various publications like Art US Magazine, Art Papers, Gutter Magazine, and her own art blog, Bmore Art.