Cara Ober is a painter, writer and teacher living in Baltimore and showing her work around the region. She teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Towson, Johns Hopkins, and Loyola College. A lifetime area resident, Cara, 33, also writes art reviews for Art US Magazine, Art Papers, and Gutter Magazine. Her latest show, I Am Who I Pretend to Be, runs at Randall Scott Gallery through April 12.

What are some of the ideas and themes that your work engages with?

I am a storyteller, but my paintings have more in common with poetry than traditional narratives or prose. The stories I tell are mostly autobiographical and personal – my “material” is what I know, what I experience, and what I learn on a daily basis. Painting is a mode of thinking for me. It is a way for me to examine the fragments of memories and moments and to combine them in a way that is more interesting and, possibly, more real, than the way they were originally experienced.

The theme of memory in art seems really played out right now – a cliché – and, often times, I think an artist’s memories are so tender and so poignant that they interfere with the editing required for solid visual work. I think a lot of art about this subject – memory, consciousness, the unconscious – is half-assed.

However, I’m at a point where I know what I am interested in and there’s no getting around it. I can’t invent a concept and manufacture excitement about it. In graduate school, I attempted to be more “conceptual” in my studio practice and it always felt artificial and flat. I am interested in exploring the mystery of the personal self; the interior life lived in the brain, and, specifically, mine.

Well Meaning, Cara Ober
38×40″
Painting on canvas