Carlos "Shiney" Moon

Carlos Alpha “Shiney” Moon (1906-1953) was one of the most notable artists associated with Alabama’s Dixie Art Colony of the 1930s and 1940s. He was known for his vibrant oil and watercolor paintings, which often featured Alabama cityscapes and landscapes. In addition, he was a photographer, a successful business-owner, and a prominent community member in Florala, Covington County.

Born in Birmingham, Jefferson County, on May 18, 1906, to Charles Crawford “C.C.” Moon and Mary Louisa Williams, Moon grew up in Andalusia, Covington County. He was an only child. His father was the first commercial photographer in Andalusia. Moon attended Alabama Polytechnic Institute (present-day Auburn University) for one year, from 1927-28. While at school, he joined a fraternity, playing the banjo in its musical group. More important for his later art career, he took a course in architectural drawing. When funds for his education ran out, he too became a photographer, in Troy, Pike County. His business struggled through the early years of the Great Depression.

Moon married Sadie Lois Pouncey in 1933. The couple had a daughter, Martha Moon, who later inspired his early art career. He and his family moved to Florala in 1935 after his mother-in-law fell ill so he could help run her women’s dress shop. It thrived under his management. By the late 1930s, he was a prosperous merchant who opened other apparel shops on the Florida panhandle; his business endeavors left him plenty of free time to pursue other interests. To keep his young daughter interested in art, Moon began dabbling in painting in 1943. Encouraged by his friends, he continued to paint. His earliest oil paintings featured Florala scenery.

Dixie Art Colonists

After having read about the Dixie Art Colony in a Birmingham newspaper, Moon and his family drove to the colony site on Lake Jordan in 1944, where he met Kelly Fitzpatrick and other participants. He and Fitzpatrick became good friends immediately. Through the letters they exchanged, Kelly and other colonists encouraged him to continue painting and return to the colony. He continued painting, attending the colony session in 1945 and again in 1947 and 1948, the colony’s final two years.

Although Moon initially preferred to paint in oil, under the influence of Kelly and other colonists, he gradually moved to watercolors around 1946. His earliest paintings favored a traditional, realistic style, often featuring landscapes around Florala and other south Alabama points of interest. A few, such as his painting of the women’s dormitory at the Dixie colony, show an impressionist style with short, loose brushstrokes. He gradually began experimenting, and, as in the painting he titled Moonlight on Pickle Hill, he occasionally let his imagination take him in a new direction. It was the featured painting in 1949 at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. Moonlight on Pickle Hill presents a landscape with a steep hill in the background on which a seemingly precariously situated house is perched. A scarecrow in the foreground appears to be walking up the hill in the scene whose dark, foreboding sky gives it a somewhat spooky appearance. Like so many of the women painters in the colony, he too painted flowers.

Moonlight on Pickle Hill

Moon became aware that the art world was increasingly shifting towards experimenting with the Modernism movement. Although most other colony participants, particularly Kelly, rejected this shift, Moon began to incorporate some more Modernist characteristics into his work. Moon’s watercolor paintings began to feature bending forms or sharp angles. Although some paintings remained grounded in local Alabama scenes, particularly from south Alabama, by the end of Moon’s short painting career, many of his paintings were totally abstract, sometimes featuring a remnant of architecture. He usually used saturated, vivid colors to focus his composition, although a few paintings are more subdued. He typically applied paint, often undiluted with water, with a controlled hand. Scholars are unclear about whether these paintings were done at the colony or at a cabin he used as a studio in his backyard in Florala.

Perhaps beginning in 1946, Moon also traveled, often with Kelly, to other parts of the South, including the North Carolina mountains and New Orleans; such trips often resulted in both realistic and semi-abstract compositions. He confined his subjects almost exclusively to landscapes and architectural forms, only occasionally including human figures, which tended to be small and abstract. He practiced sketching faces and human figures using self-study books, but, given his lack of formal training, more intricate human figures were beyond his skill. Furthermore, he didn’t need to earn money with portrait commissions as other artists did.

Dixie Art Colony Dormitory

When Dixie “colonist” Genevieve Southerland founded offshoot colonies near her home in Mobile, Mobile County, and on the western Gulf Coast in 1946-53, Moon was immediately invited to participate as an instructor. He first attended the one in Mobile in 1946, then in the small villages of Bayou La Batre and nearby Coden in Mobile County. Loved for his congenial, good-humored personality as well as his painting skill, Moon became an important instructor alongside Kelly. Boats and bayous became subjects of his watercolors. He painted many of his abstract paintings during the early 1950s.

Like Kelly, Moon was also very gregarious. He often assumed leadership positions in other Alabama organizations, including the Alabama Art League, which arranged exhibitions of his work, and featured him and his work in their small periodical, Alabama Artist, in 1953. He often won prizes at these exhibitions.

Painting of Mobile's Davis Avenue

He was a member of the local Rotary Club and assumed its presidency during his later years. He also enjoyed hydroplane racing on local lakes, and he organized a local club for fellow hydroplane enthusiasts. He continued to advocate for art in his community as well. He rented a room in downtown Florala, where he taught art. He founded additional art schools in Alabama towns such as Brewton, Escambia County; Geneva, Geneva County; and Andalusia. He spoke about art at local organizations, often explaining modern art, which he claimed fostered creativity. All the while, he continued to oversee his apparel shops. By this time, Moon had hired local women to supervise them, so they could largely operate without him.

Realizing that he needed art training beyond what Kelly and others at the colonies could offer, Moon studied at the University of Alabama during the summer of 1951 under faculty artists Richard Zoellner and Richard Brough. In 1952, Moon traveled to Boston and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, studying under artist and art instructor Theodore (Ted) Kautsky there. A number of his realistic watercolors reflect the New England coast style, but also the seashore on the Eastern Gulf coast near his home in Florala.

In 1953, Moon’s ten-year art career was cut abruptly short when he died of a heart attack. Both Kelly Fitpatrick and Genevieve Southerland had also died of heart attacks in previous months. To a good extent, his painting reflects the Alabama scene of the 1940s and early 1950s, which included landscape and urban views. The whole larger movement is named “the American scene” in painting.