Many of the wooden frames were buckled and the canvases shredded. All of them were covered in a thick film of pungent mud.
"I had to walk away from it, I was that upset, I couldn't handle it," Mr Moran said.
"I told my friends to leave me alone and I took a knife and ran the knife through some of them that couldn't be saved."
Mr Moran's studio had been completely submerged by floodwaters in the northern New South Wales city of Lismore.
And, like many local business owners, Mr Moran was uninsured.