For centuries, the moon has been an inspiration for storytellers. Among the myths, the moon is said to be responsible for the unexplained, with the power to drive people to madness.
Carroll Cloar’s Moonstricken Girls leans into these folktales the artist heard as a child, blending his imagination and style to create a beautiful yet bizarre moment.
In the painting, an intense golden-orange moon contrasts an empty turquoise night sky. A row of trees and a few houses in the distance fill the horizon of a purple-hazed rural field.
The calmness of the evening landscape is interrupted by the pair of girls, twisting under the moon, as they hold their heads. There is a freedom, wildness, and supernaturalism embodied in the girls.
Though the painting alludes to the influence of the moon, the story offers more questions than answers.
Using elements from Grant Wood, Edward Hopper, and Henri Rousseau, Cloar’s work has been described as realist, folky surrealist, or even, real-surreal. However, Cloar was more often tied to magical realism because of his use of symbols and allegory to portray the mysteriousness of everyday life.
Cloar avoided the label of “magical realist,” rather choosing to describe his work more thematically as, “the last of old America that isn’t long for this earth.”
Cloar’s style, which was consistent throughout his career, pays homage to these influences as well as Pointillism of the Post Impressionists. These characteristics can be seen within Moonstricken Girls – a landscape of saturated purples and blues, a flatness adorned with a variety of textures, and decorative stylized patterning.
Cloar also drew inspiration from Southern Gothic authors such as Eudora Welty and William Faulkner.
“Southerners love a good tale,” Welty once said, “They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers [and] great talkers.”
Called a painter of memory, Cloar was a storyteller, weaving together his life and mystery.
