MOLLY MANSFIELD
Hi I’m Molly. I'm an oil painter based in Taylor, Texas. I am a mother to four vibrant little boys and I work out of my backyard school bus turned studio in the in between times of motherhood and homeschooling.
I have always felt the need to create and as a child made as many crafts and things as I could get my wee hands on. I took my first painting class when I was 16 as dual credit at the local Community College. It just so happened to be the only classroom with proper ventilation for oil painting. I was immediately hooked and knew that I had found my medium. I have always loved the sensory experience of oil painting, the smell of pigments and oils, the texture radiance of the painted canvas. The buttery consistency of the paint gliding across canvas. Tension is encountered in much of life. Like Todd Snider says “ I got tension out in traffic, I got tension in my office, I got tension, and it's everywhere that I go”. But there is no tension in the simple application of oil paint to canvas, it is freedom, it is gliding, it is accepting.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
My paintings explore the human relationship through images that represent community. My process is intuitive and I frequently paint from both life and memory. I paint wet in wet, laying down gestural brush strokes often leaving areas more developed than others. The unfinished quality of my paintings is messy and beautiful, representing for me the journey that we are on as humans. I use contrast and repetition to question our fears which unconfronted, are ultimately the things that keep us from becoming all that we were meant to be.
