We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mollie Fox. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mollie below.

Mollie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Teaching, as a rule, is a career path for the risk averse. Your schedule is preset and regular, the parameters of your job are more or less dictated to you, and although a fundamental part of the job description is to encourage risk taking in your students, the fences to swing to are more garden picket than major league outfield. I taught special ed for many years and the majority of that time was teaching art to students with language based learning disabilities. I was daily trying to come up with new ways to encourage the kids to allow themselves to celebrate themselves, and believe in themself. I created systems in my classroom that encouraged risk taking. After years of giving all of my creativity over to my students my own art practice had been reduced to making a holiday card once a year. I was depleted and discouraged. My last year teaching the school had, in a cost saving and space saving manor, packed my classes to the point of disfunction. One Friday after an exhausting week alone in my room that used to feel like an imagination workshop but now felt like a repository for kids in between their academic classes, I sat down and started to cry. When I calmed down, the room was dark and a street light was shining through the third story window onto the wall where I had outlined the importance to take a chance on yourself as an artist. In that moment I realized that it was now or never and was never going to be any younger that I was on that day. I came up with a plan to get my groove back. Even though the next steps might seem measured, I wanted to be smart about taking a chance on myself. One, quit my current position and find a transitional job that did not involve art to give myself a runway to really explore who and what kind of artist I wanted to be. Two find a way to practice self love and shine theory. Three over nine months I found the fence I wanted to swing for and built a business plan around that. Nine months later with a fake it till you make it mindset, on a snow day in February, I drove to a fancy mall with sketches in my hand and went to every department store and high end retailer and told them I could help them bring customers into their stores with live painting events. Out of 23 stores, three took a flier on me and I’ve never looked back. I made as much in my first year as I had being a teacher. Rather than be down on myself for not taking a chance on myself sooner, I am accepting that everything before carried me to this moment and I’m where I need to be and I am enough.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As someone who has struggled with feeling unseen, my art helps me feel recognized while in the act of truly seeing others. 90% of my practice is being a live event painter. That can either mean painting a canvas of a main event such at corporate retreat or a wedding couple. Most often I’m hired to paint live guest portraits. At an event I paint watercolor portraits of the guests. In this age of AI, clients rave about being witness to art coming to life in front of their eyes. Live painting is more than a performance. It is an interactive and immersive experience that cannot be replicated with technology. The event space becomes an actual studio he guests become models. The juxtaposition of old world art and new world environments feels like magic. In an time when gathering in person is rare and authentic real-in-the-moment unedited creation feels like something from another era, my art leaves an indelible impression that spreads joy, enhances creativity in others, and fosters community as people genuinely want to talk about the feeling of having art made for them. Wedding couples rave about having bespoke heirloom art. Knowing that something I’ve painted will live in their homes and be a part of their future story means a great deal to me.

Additionally, I work with private clients as well as brands to elevate a product with live customization and personalization events. Major brands, such as Bloomingdales, Jo Malone London, and Tecovas Boots hire me to paint live at promotional events, brand launches and product activations where I paint on their products directly. It is my goal to bring art to life for customers by enhancing a product with hand painting. These experiences add authentic not-had in other spaces elements.

The third component of my work is my studio painting. I do commission painting of anything on everything from pets on Woodford Reserve and Veuve Cliquot bottles to house and people portraits. I’ve recently begun to partner with a papery to paint watercolors for their invitations.

My daughter recently told me she was proud of me and looked up to me as someone who took a risk on launching my art career. Obviously, there were loads of tears. Up until this week, every brand I had worked for I had chased down myself, Just yesterday, David Yurman Jewely reached out to me over Instagram to have me paint for them. When the person told me their was no other artist they considered, I cried some more.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

When I was around four years old, my mother went back to college to finish her degree. It was the early 70s and she felt empowered to finish what she had left behind to get married and have kids. Because she could not afford child care, she would take me along to her classes but I had to be quiet. I remember sitting with giant headphones on learning French and Spanish in the language labs. I would flip through picture books when she was in some class, probably business something or other. My most vivid memories are when we would go to the art history lectures. She would buy me a Lifesavers 5-flavor or butterscotch roll and I would sit on the steps of the darkened auditorium looking at the slides that corresponded to Jansen’s. The paintings were overwhelming and when I was a little older, I could bring crayons and paper to the lectures. My drawings would end up on the refrigerator and when the edges inevitably curled, they would find their way to the trash. When I expressed wanting to be an artist or clothing designer, the ideas were brushed off as not practical, not for me. She wanted something stable and reliable for me. I took that to mean I was not capable or worthy of being an artist and having a successful art practice. I have a lot of complicated feelings about being schlepped around to museums to see and appreciate art without the supportive language of “that could be your art on that wall.” Much much later in life I realized that the lesson I had to unlearn was that art was not a worthwhile pursuit neither was I a person who could be a professional artist. My mom did her best. As a single mother of limited resources she worried that art is a risky career choice in a capricious marketplace, She was just afraid of the “if.” If I couldn’t make a living as an artist. If the world rejected my art. If my art was just not up to snuff.
So I studied art and art history and business and English, and French. I worked in her travel business and took some art classes here and there. I got married to an unsupportive husband who found little value in art. I had kids and encouraged them to try everything and take big gulps of life. I framed their art and when they made new art I carefully wrapped and packed the old art. I kept taking more art classes for myself, but always hanging back and feeling bad about it. When I left my unsupportive husband and needed to get a job to support myself, I needed something practical to work when the kids were at school, so I got a teaching degree and taught other kids how to believe in themselves.
I suppose that after years and years of affirming others to believe in themselves and their creations I was actually talking to myself. One day, I listened.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I mean, getting paid to do this is pretty rewarding. The affirmation that I am creating something of value that is being recognized as such fills me with pride and joy. As corny as it might sound, due to the nature of the art that I make, the most rewarding aspect of being artist is the joyI get to give others. The hand of the artist is often invisible under most circumstances. I make art for the people and I feed off of that joy and it propels me to want to keep making art and keep getting better at it. I love creating art for folks in real time. I love the studio work as well, but the reactions of people when they see what I’ve done for them are beyond rewarding.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.molliefoxstudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/molliefoxstudio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MollieFoxMakesArt/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollie-fox-17327916/

Image Credits

All photos were taken by me with the exception of the the first one of me in a darker room behind a table. That was taken by Lauren Wysocki of Lauren Wysocki Photography