I am Danette Moran, The Determined One. I am a self-taught abstract painter who has finally found that I can mix my knowledge of photography, gardening, cooking, and writing with my love for the outdoors. It comes alive and breathes as I use mixes of inks and paints on canvas or paper. I see my soul in the raw and undiluted as my hands and tools play like I’m the conductor of a symphony! I also paint to bring out a feeling, a vision, or a thought that is new in the mind of the observer; to find a sense of calm and connection when looking at my work. When I am not painting, I am at the beach, traveling, or visiting family and friends.

I am a fine artist who has taught workshops & exhibited across the country in both fine art & photographic mediums. My passion for art led to the pursuit of further knowledge & earning a degree from Pratt Institute of Art in NYC. As a current resident of LA and experiencing the heart of Hollywood plus having felt the pulse of art in NY, a large body of my work portrays a tribute to music legends who laid the foundation in jazz, blues, gospel, and entertainment fields whose influences throughout time still inspire many of us today.

Being a PK (Preacher’s kid) and being taught that the greatest gift is love for one another, my work evolved to include the spiritual realm with Angels and my interpretation of Bible verses; the aim is to uplift, encourage, heal, and inspire the spirit of the viewer.

My work is often symbolic and crosses boundaries between contemporary and historic subjects. I use a realistic style to compose highly detailed and meticulous portraiture and figurative art drawn from living persons. The media I use is mainly Pencil.

My overall goal is to create an artistic viewpoint that gives way to Hope, Angels, and Personal Well-Being.

My paintings began to unravel and reveal the silence, the fright and the tribulations throughout childhood to the end of a destructive marriage. The screams never heard, the tears never seen, the fear not shown, constant fear, the shame of body and mind. My paintings then became the venue to my self-liberation. My art depicts the evolution from childhood terrors to adult recovery, and brings light to the darkness. In addition, there is growth in my work, reflecting the joy found in other areas of my life. My art was reclusive and hidden for years. During the isolation of COVID, I began to paint again with zealousness and ease and found a genuine newness and expression to my work that began to sing. I found my voice and soul again in painting. Emergence began and exposure of my art was welcoming.

I have always been drawn to images that surprise—ones that feel a little offbeat, mysterious, or just plain strange. While I do plenty of straight or lightly enhanced photography, what really excites me is taking an image and pushing it into new territory: twisting, layering, abstracting—basically playing until it feels like something unexpected has emerged.

My eye tends to land on unusual shapes, odd juxtapositions, or scenes that others might overlook. I collect these visual ingredients and let instinct take over in the editing process. Sometimes I know where I’m going; often I don’t. I just keep experimenting until something clicks—when the image feels done, or at least done enough to walk away from.

For me, with billions of (phone) cameras clicking away every day, the challenge is to make something that doesn’t get lost in the flood. That’s where the odd, the abstract, or the slightly weird come in. If my work can get someone to stop for even a few seconds and think, “What am I looking at?” or “How did he do that?” then I have succeeded.

The pieces I’ve submitted for “Creativity Unbound” lean into that idea. They’re not trying to document the world so much as reimagine it. They’re meant to be a bit jarring, maybe even puzzling, but hopefully also engaging—something to pull the viewer in for a second look.

In my art, I focus on art history, the lovely brushstrokes of Van Gogh or the colors of Monet, and the passion and perseverance of Frida Kahlo. My current passion is to teach and mentor my art students. I teach them the importance of understanding what art is; it’s a way to express your own technique, style, and skill. Once a student understands his or her own talent, then the sky is the limit.

My school showcases the students’ work through Artsonia, local art shows, and Meet and Greets with their family and friends at our school gymnasium. We also have many city-wide contests, shows, and events for them. This summer myself my students and I have been invited to the Mission Trail Art Show, and Cloudcroft, New Mexico Christmas in July Jamboree.

Now, during my summer break, I’m doing a lot of en plein air work here in West Texas and the Southern New Mexico region.

When I was seven years old, my father, an artist himself, brought me to a ceramic studio for the very first time. I had a severe stutter as a child, and this early exposure to my craft taught me a whole new way to communicate with the world around me. Later in life, I encountered folk art in the form of my grandmother’s heirloom 19th-century Judaica pieces, which depicted old homes, nature, and mythical beasts. I was further inspired by the work of Grandma Moses, because her unique style resonated with me and helped shape the way I imbued my paintings of the long-ago shtetl with warmth.

My final influence happened almost by accident; my background in sculpture and ceramics allowed me to study with the sculptor Lavinsky, who was the great artist Mayakovksy’s son. Lavinsky’s studio was where I experienced Russian futurism first-hand, and saw Miakhovsky’s poetry performed, which taught me how to look at the world around me with both a poet’s and a painter’s eyes.

My art absorbed those influences to form a unique window into a magical Jewish folk world filled with mythical birds, fish, unicorns, swans, lions, and of course, the everyday people who coexist with the Divine in the melody of nuances inherent in traditional Jewish life. Using traditional oil and canvas, I express my inner world – one that is a reflection of a time and place that has been destroyed but lives on in a beautiful culture that survives despite persecution, repression, and Soviet ideology.

I believe in animism—the understanding that everything, living or inanimate, possesses a spirit.
This belief shapes my approach to art, where photography becomes a way of revealing the energy flowing through all things.

Light is not just a tool but the essence of this spirit, illuminating what often remains unseen.
Yet the unseen is not separate from the real. The surreal and the spiritual are often one and the same, emerging from the liminal space between perception and mystery. It is within this space that my work unfolds—where forms dissolve, the ordinary shifts, and hidden connections quietly reveal themselves.

Whether working in analog or digital, my process is slow and meditative, allowing each image to unfold naturally. I am drawn to abstract forms, portraits, and nature—subjects that blur the boundary between the visible and the invisible.

Black and white distills moments into their purest form, while color deepens the emotional and spiritual tone of an image. Photography continues its magic in the darkroom or on the screen, where light reveals a truth that has always existed beneath the surface.

Inspired by the teachings of the Buddha, I seek to create stillness—a pause for reflection in a turbulent world. My work invites viewers to sense the quiet forces holding everything together and to glimpse the harmony that exists beyond what is immediately seen.

For me, photography is meditation: a practice of presence, a way of listening.
An offering—
a window into the spirit that is everything.

My painting journey has been a transformative testament to my life’s intricacies. As a constant companion since childhood, it’s become a medium of expression, an unfolding narrative deeply woven into my existence, primarily revolving around migration, the immigrant experience, and love. Born in Ethiopia, I’ve been on a 28-year-long odyssey in the U.S. These years have spun a rich, varied tapestry of encounters—embracing challenges, relishing promises, surmounting obstacles, bridging cultural divides, and fighting injustices. In my isolation from family, the local community emerged as a nurturing home away from home.

I’ve been moved by the extraordinary women’s empowerment I’ve observed, culminating in an unconventional understanding of love, one that transcends borders and blooms into sisterhood. These profound instances of affection frequently find their way into my paintings.

As an African lesbian woman, I’ve faced significant challenges, including the fear of coming out and living a perpetual charade conforming to heteronormative expectations, especially during visits to my home country. Despite this, I’ve built a resilient support system of empathetic individuals, their narratives mirrored in my art as I delve into the multifaceted reality of womanhood and love’s dimensions.

My art, although not bound by a specific style, explores subjects that resonate with me deeply, with each brush stroke representing my perceptions and experiences. My ultimate artistic aim is to encapsulate and represent the experiences, emotions, and narratives that have molded my identity.

October has always felt like a threshold, a month that carries us from the fullness of light into the quiet of darker days. It is not only a season of endings but also a season of beginnings, when the air sharpens, and the world slows, asking us to notice the beauty in transition. This painting was created as a reflection of that moment, when fire and sky, solitude and song, memory and presence meet in balance.

The night is vast, filled with deep indigo and scattered stars, a sky that feels larger in October than at any other time of the year. The crescent moon watches with a thin arc of light while a small planet burns steadily nearby. Together they remind us of the endless cycles above and within us, how time continues even as seasons fade. October has always spoken to me through these symbols, showing that nothing is fixed, that change itself is what holds us steady.

At the heart of the painting is a solitary figure seated beside a fire, a guitar resting in their hands. They are not alone in spirit, even if no one else shares the space. The fire is a companion, the night sky another, and the music yet another. October is a month when sound seems to carry further, where a few notes strummed into the cool air linger long after the hand leaves the strings. The guitar becomes a bridge between the inner world of reflection and the outer world of stars and earth.

The fire is more than light or warmth. It is a ritual, a gathering point, and a metaphor for October itself. Sparks rise into the dark like leaves caught in an upward wind, reminding us that all things move in cycles of release and renewal. The glow reaches outward across the ground, coloring it with shifting shades of amber, orange, and gold, echoing the tones of the season. To sit beside such a fire in October is to sit within the month’s essence: fleeting warmth, quiet transformation, and the invitation to pause before winter takes hold.

Though the scene shows a single figure, it is not a picture of loneliness. Instead, it is about communion with the earth, with memory, with unseen presence. October has always carried the sense that the veil between worlds is thinner, that voices of the past and whispers of what is to hover close around us. The act of playing music to the fire and the night becomes a gesture of connection, as if the song could rise with the sparks and become part of the larger rhythm of the season.

The textures and colors were chosen to reflect the raw quality of October. The graininess of the sky, the rough strokes of the ground, and the stark brilliance of flame against shadow create a sense of a world in transition. October does not offer polished certainty but instead an unfinished beauty. It asks us to honor the moment in between, to value both the fading of light and the persistence of song.

This painting is my meditation on October, a month that teaches us to embrace impermanence with wonder.