Accidental Beauty Local Artist Martin Gerard Moran Has Earned National Fame With His Reverse Painting-On-Glass Technique

The typical reaction to Martin Gerard Moran’s art is, “How does he do that?” The same could be asked of Moran’s career. How does a guy from Spokane with no formal training in the visual arts make a living selling elaborate, 40-inch-square cocktail tables for $4,600 a pop? The answer may have something to do with what Moran’s Russian piano teacher advised years ago. “He told me to become a jack of all trades … and a master of at least two.”

The first trade Moran mastered was furniture-making. After learning about woods, laminates and Formica in Seattle, he returned to Spokane and helped design and build furnishings for more than 700 Cavanaugh’s guest rooms.

His masterpiece, Moran says, is the massive, 24-foot-long African rosewood conference table he built for Gonzaga University’s Board of Regents. Push a button, and a 20-foot-long pedestal in the center rises, revealing hidden telephone and computer jacks.

But six years ago, while working on a commercial project, Moran injured his back. During his lengthy recuperation, Moran “became fairly depressed with life” and sought a new direction. “My dad, a devout Catholic, told me to pay attention if I ever woke around 3 in the morning, because that’s the prayer hour. “So, I go to bed praying, wake up at exactly 3, and plain as day, this message echoes around the room: ‘Art is where it’s at. Trust me, I’m your most significant other.’

“Well,” recalls Moran, “I knew it didn’t mean music. And I knew it wasn’t furniture design.

“So I thought, maybe it’s visual art. I’d never tried it before. But I decided I wouldn’t cut my hair until I was recognized as an artist.”

The visual medium Moran chose was reverse painting on glass. Not only did it permit plenty of trial and error, but he could drop the finished piece into the perfect frame - one of his exquisitely crafted tables.

If Moran was onto something, though, Spokane didn’t recognize it. Tables displayed in a downtown furniture store window and Spokane Art School’s downtown gallery languished, and Moran’s hair eventually reached halfway down his back.

Then two years ago, with help from family and friends, Moran took on the best in the business at New York’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair. His one-of-a-kind tables were a big hit in the Big Apple, and Moran - who signs his work Martin Gerard - has kept busy ever since, selling tables through exclusive Roche-Bobois stores and private galleries scattered from Manhattan to Rancho Mirage.

“I call my pieces “jewelry for your floor” and “art we can both eat off of,”’ says Moran.

Besides being able to pay the bills (and cut his hair), Moran has noticed other advantages of success.

“Now that I’m the artiste and not the woodworker, the respect is greater,” he reflects. “It used to be, ‘How quick can you have this done and how little will you sell it for?’

“Now the attitude is, ‘Take all the time you need.’ That’s nice.”

Moran is so confident in his mastery of visual arts that he’s ready to leave furniture-making behind. New work from the Martin Gerard Design Studio in the Spokane Valley includes screens and wall pieces painted on thick, sometimes bent, acrylic. (Moran calls the bent ones “potato chips” and wonders how he’ll hang them.)

Another evolution in his work has been a move away from recognizable images.

“When I start with an idea, like mountains or lakes or rivers, the result tends to look very contrived,” Moran explains. “I prefer to go into each piece without any idea. The beauty for me is to achieve something totally fluid - what I call an orchestrated accident.”

He describes reverse painting as “zen-like.”

“The process is totally blind. There’s a lot of flipping the glass over to see what’s happening, and most of my time is spent removing enamel from the surface.”

Sometimes he doesn’t realize he’s finished a piece until he rotates it 90 degrees, and says, “Yeah, that’s it!” Then he gives it a name like “Inner Space” or “Dreamtime.”

What surprised Moran most about his new career is not his sudden success, but that he can achieve it while working in relative obscurity in his hometown.

“Having grown up in Spokane,” he says, “I always thought nothing happened here. Success was only possible by leaving - by going to one of those happening places like New York or L.A.

“But now Spokane exports art to those places we think of as happening. And it’s important for Spokane’s self-image that we realize that.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos