Eye to Eye in May Urbanite Issue

Cara Ober
Coupled Up in Bedroom Skin
2006
40 x 40 inches
Mixed media on canvas


So much of what art is, lies in the process of creation, yet we seldom have the opportunity to enter an artist’s mind to get a sense of how a work of art actually develops. I have always found the work that best expresses its process to be the most interesting. Perhaps it is that I can feel the spirit of the artist when I have a sense of her struggle to find that final form that, in a sense, represents the artist’s development.

Cara Ober is a young Baltimore artist who is garnering a great deal of interest both within and beyond this city. We recently had an exchange about her work, and I found her to be especially forthcoming.

Of the painting shown here, Ober says, “This image is a painting I sort of hate but love too much to get rid of. I have been fascinated with shadows and darkness, and the idea that for everything light and good, there is a balance. So I wondered what would happen if I made a really dark, almost black painting ... Paintings need to have a bit of agony in them to be really interesting, a struggle where you push yourself somewhere new and unknown, where you really have no idea what to do next, or where you have to let go of the elements you love best in order for the whole to work.”

—Alex Castro