Paint me a Panther: The story behind the new art deep inside Bank of America Stadium

CHARLOTTE, N.C. ( CHARLOTTE SPORTS LIVE ) — As a rule of thumb, most artists usually won’t reflect on their work until the job is finished.

However as Matt Moore understands now, there are exceptions.

“This is one of those jobs where all the things I love the most are kind of coming to this collision point,” he said.

One could say it all started back in 1995. That’s when Moore and his family attended the first-ever home game of a brand NFL new team called the Carolina Panthers. So imagine the surprise, nearly three decades later, when that same team called on him.

“That is everything,” Moore smiles. “That is who I am doing it for.”

As it turns out, the Panthers marketing department wanted the 39-year-old to take their tunnel, the one that takes their players out to the field, to the next level.

“When I walked through this building about three years ago, when I started, I was like,
‘This is such a blank canvas that we could do something really cool with,’” explains the team’s marketing manager Jaclyn Urda.

Moore understood the assignment. Shortly after getting the gig, he and a friend, another painter named Joe Dobson, dropped everything and set up shop at Bank of America Stadium. For the last few weeks, they’ve practically lived there.

“It is such a unique thing to see (this place) when it was full of 75 thousand people,” Moore said. “Then to be in here at night, when it is just me and Joe and a couple security guards. That is cool in itself.”

But certainly not as cool as the near-finished product. A 130-foot-long masterpiece that measures 13 feet high and features a pack of angry panthers in their element.

“I am obsessed with it,” Urda exclaims. “I have certain ones that are my favorite. It’s crazy.”

Carolina players will now walk out in style and it’s all in the style this long-time Charlotte resident helped create.

“I feel very fortunate that I get to take the goofy thoughts that I have in my mind, I get to make them a reality and people pay me for that,” Moore said. “It is incredible.”

And definitely, something worth his admiration, even if there remains a few things to complete.

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