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Cactus Moon Studio

@cactusmoonstudio

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Online exhibition platform for contemporary painting
Founded by @taymourgrahne
Now on view: Morteza Khakshoor & Hilary Doyle

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Cactus Moon Studio is delighted to present Investigating Maria Sibylla Merian, a body of paintings by Massachusetts-based artist Hilary Doyle, inspired by the extraordinary life of 17th-century German artist, naturalist, and pioneering entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), launching today, October 6, 2026.

Link in bio to view the show.

#CactusMoonStudio #ContemporaryArt #HilaryDoyle by @cactusmoonstudio

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9 days ago

Cactus Moon Studio is delighted to present I Used To Be Able To Fly, an online solo exhibition by Morteza Khakshoor. Now live on our website - Link in bio.

Launching today, 25 September 2026, the exhibition brings together a new body of paintings on paper that stage solitary figures within scenes thick with quietly charged objects, offering fragments of narrative that resist any single reading.

I Used To Be Able To Fly is now live online.

Morteza Khakshoor
I Used To Be Able To Fly
September 25 - October 23, 2026

#CactusMoonStudio #MortezaKhakshoor #OnlineExhibition by @cactusmoonstudio

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20 days ago

“I try to make the story as I'm making the paintings,” Khakshoor remarks, admitting to many works not explaining themselves to him until many months after completion.

Often, he is “maybe fifty per cent in the dark” as he works and positively welcomes viewers inventing interpretations he never imagined. “You have to give a little bit of information - enough information for people to work with,” he says, but never enough to lose the delicious ambiguity that pervades the scene. Morteza Khakshoor, from I Used To Be Able To Fly, 25 September - 23 October 2026. Online Exhibition.

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MORTEZA KHAKSHOOR
Savage Concentration, 2026
Acrylic on paper, unframed
75.5 x 55.5 cm. / 29.7 x 21.9 in.

#CactusMoonStudio #ContemporaryArt #MortezaKhakshoor by @cactusmoonstudio

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17 hours ago

In "Appetite for Delusion" (2026), Morteza Khakshoor lets objects carry the weight of the figure - sometimes a gesture, sometimes the object itself standing in for the body. The plant becomes a way of seeing the figure, and the figure a way of seeing the plant.

For this piece, he was drawn to the plant's growth, and to a quiet sadness beneath it - a figure holding itself together with a kind of grace.

Morteza Khakshoor, from I Used To Be Able To Fly, 25 September - 23 October 2026. Online Exhibition.

#CactusMoonStudio #ContemporaryArt #MortezaKhakshoor by @cactusmoonstudio

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2 days ago

It’s the objects in the paintings that signal that “little bit of information”. Many come from the artist’s life: a tissue box, a bed, the view from his Los Angeles bedroom, half-remembered observations from daily life.

The assemblage around his figures also has the effect of creating a still life – a still life loaded with suspended drama.

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MORTEZA KHAKSHOOR
After Late-Lunch In Studio (Self-Portrait), 2026
Acrylic on paper, unframed
76 x 110 cm. / 29.9 x 43.3 in.

#CactusMoonStudio #OnlineExhibition #MortezaKhakshoor by @cactusmoonstudio

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3 days ago

Hilary Doyle paints Maria Sibylla Merian into conversation across centuries - imagining her in a man's world, in a Guston painting, as "the original landscape painter" whose work shaped Doyle's own. "I'm almost in conversation with her work," Doyle says, "even though she's basically an anonymous artist at this point."

Investigating Maria Sibylla Merian is live now on Cactus Moon Studio. Link in bio.

#CactusMoonStudio #ContemporaryArt #HilaryDoyle by @cactusmoonstudio

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6 days ago

Ultimately, they're just portraits,” laughs Morteza Khakshoor as he looks at the paintings destined for his new exhibition I Used To Be Able To Fly.

This might be a self-effacing statement of fact, but tongue-in-cheek shrug notwithstanding, Khakshoor is severely underplaying the power and impact of this new body of work. Portraits they may be, but of who? And why are they so striking in their solitude or indeed, affecting in their ambiguity?

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MORTEZA KHAKSHOOR
Appetite for Delusion, 2026
Acrylic on paper, unframed
79 x 64.5 cm. / 31.1 x 25.4 in.

#CactusMoonStudio #MortezaKhakshoor #OnlineExhibition by @cactusmoonstudio

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7 days ago

Throughout the exhibition, Doyle also reflects on influence, inheritance and historical disappearance. Her work considers how Merian’s imagery fed into later stalwarts of design and decoration, such as Victorian polymath William Morris.

Whether as direct influence or broader visual afterlife, the point is clear: women’s contributions often shape culture without recognition. Doyle’s project seeks to reverse that process, restoring Merian not just to visibility but to cultural centrality.

‘My dream,’ Doyle says, ‘is that maybe Merian will get weaved back into the future.’

HILARY DOYLE
Maria Sibylla Merian: In Flight, 2024-2025
Acrylic on canvas
152.4 x 122 cm. / 60 x 48 in.

#CactusMoonStudio #ContemporaryArt #OnlineExhibition by @cactusmoonstudio

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8 days ago

Diane Chappalley’s exhibition with Cactus Moon Studio has explored processes of becoming - transitional states like matrescence and grief - through painting and ceramic. Recurring motifs of flowers, hearts, seeds, and roots move between two and three dimensions, weaving the corporeal and the mythic into a shared world.

This work is part of Diane Chappalley’s current solo show with Cactus Moon Studio, The Flowers are Witness, exploring transformation, embodiment, and the cycles of becoming.

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DIANE CHAPPALLEY
Veins through Frost, 2026
Oil on linen
130 x 170 cm. / 51 x 67 in.

#CactusMoonStudio #OnlineExhibition #DianeChappalley by @cactusmoonstudio

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10 days ago

Working primarily in oils on raw linen, Chappalley’s richly atmospheric worlds dwell between landscape, abstraction and representation.

Her paintings are populated with flowers, roots, terrain and cosmic forms, emerging, merging and dissolving into one another in hazy, semi-landscapes. Upon encountering her work, there is no easy interpretation or immediate reading - Chappalley draws us directly into the mystical realm of her imagination.

DIANE CHAPPALLEY
In the Gentleness of Death, 2026
Oil on linen
45 x 55 cm. / 17.7 x 21.6 in.

#CactusMoonStudio #DianeChappalley #OnlineGallery by @cactusmoonstudio

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13 days ago

Hilary Doyle creates evocative paintings that weave together history, nature, motherhood, and imagination. Inspired by the extraordinary life of Maria Sibylla Merian, her work reimagines the pioneering artist and naturalist through dreamlike scenes of curiosity, discovery, and transformation.

Coming soon to Cactus Moon Studio.

Investigating Maria Sibylla Merian
6 October - 3 November 2026

#CactusMoonStudio #HilaryDoyle #ContemporaryArt by @cactusmoonstudio

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14 days ago

In the studio painting ‘Spiral in Obscurity’ 🌀
Last week for my show ✨POROUS BODIES ✨ you can explore it via the link in bio @cactusmoonstudio @taymourgrahneprojects ✨ taken in London, United Kingdom by @cactusmoonstudio

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