Perpetual search 2, 2022, oil and acrylic on linen, 36” x 48”

The Madcap Swimmers have been a part of Moran’s work since 2017, when Moran began planning a year-long drive across North America with her family, leaving their home in Brooklyn in search for a new place to live. During this time, she had also taken up long distance swimming as a daily practice, and the swimmers appeared in her work—heavily abstracted at the time—as a group of women searching for a distant, unattainable utopia. In this new body of work, Moran’s paintings have become more representational—the swimmers imbued with further narrative and fiction. Wearing the simple uniform of a black wetsuit, they engage in group activities such as art-making, dance, and theatre, in the tradition of historical intentional communities, as an attempt to manifest their ideal life. While exploring the fine line between ideal and dogma, belonging and conformity, these new works also touch upon themes of play, idealism, tenderness, closeness, and hope.