THE GOOD LIFE
ST YL E
Murals In Flight Amanda Moody, the local artist behind a mural at CLT, finds peace in the process
(Above) Moody painted the floor-to-ceiling mural in the American Express Centurion Lounge at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. (Below) Clients can order wallpaper and fabric by the yard with Moody’s original designs.
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IN 2014, when her daughter was 5, Amanda Moody and her husband hit a rough patch in their marriage. They separated for three years, and she turned to painting as therapy. “It is my saving grace,” she says. “The mediums being so fluid and uncontrollable. It’s taught me that you have to let go and just go with the flow.” Today, the 45-year-old works out of her home studio in Weddington, where she runs Bombshelves, a fine art and surface design business that fashions wallpaper murals, pillows, window treatments, bedding, and more. She and her husband also reconciled. They just celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary. Bombshelves started as a vintage furniture business. Moody and a friend refinished old pieces with high-gloss lacquer and funky metallics for local antique emporiums like Sleepy Poet and Metrolina Expo. “I started painting to outfit the booth, and people started noticing,” Moody recalls. She got a few commissions from that work but credits social media for her visibility: American Express found her on Instagram.
CHARLOTTEMAGAZINE.COM // JULY 2020
In 2019, the credit giant commissioned her to paint a mural in the Centurion Lounge between the D and E concourses at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. Fanciful swirls of dark blue and smoky white, reminiscent of clouds in the night sky, dance throughout the floor-toceiling painting. “They wanted something that was nature-inspired,” she says, “something that would be peaceful to calm travelers.” Like nature, her work is dynamic and full of color and dimension. Her pieces have appeared at the Mint Museum for a Safe Alliance benefit and Shain Gallery in Myers Park, among others. She also takes commissions for homes and offices, and before the pandemic, she was in talks with a California hospital to paint different murals for each patient room. Moody hopes she can still work on this project. She usually paints horizontals on a twodimensional platform, and she incorporates layered epoxy resin with different archival paints and pigments, gold or silver leaf, and diamond dust or fine glitter. “As the layers build up, there’s an aha! moment,” she says. “That’s
ZACH GRIFF FOR THE POINTS GUY; AMANDA MOODY
BY VIRGINIA BROWN
