Today we’d like to introduce you to Mollie Fox

Hi Mollie, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?

I’m not so young, so my story is going to be condensed. This is going to be purposefully vague and specific. I’m the ultimate late bloomer. When I was very young I loved making art so much it terrified me. I really don’t fully understand my fears. Maybe it was the awesome power of creating and world building and the weight of it frightened me. Maybe it was an early discomfort with the upside down world in which a lived and right side up world I had the power to create, but only live in that right side up world in my imagination. I worried also that making art was frivolous and silly and I was expected to do more serious things than make art. I have lived with a learning disability my whole life and pictures books once treasured in kindergarten were mocked by 2nd grade. I was afraid too that once my art materials were used up I’d never get more because it was time to move on to more serious pursuits. Maybe all of that is just my mind filling in a romantic back story as an excuse for a more general fear of success at something I loved, but often struggled with because it’s hard to be a self critical perfectionist. I remember “quitting” it for a long time. In college I dipped my toes in the water with a pottery class and a woodworking class. Later after college I took more drawing classes and went to more and more open studios. Eventually I guessed I stopped caring what other people thought, stopped judging myself so harshly, and just sat down and did the humbling ass work of working hard at my craft. Later, needing to support myself and my kids, I got a job teaching art to learning disabled kids. For a while it was great. I learned so much from my students and from breaking every project down into the smallest easiest step by step pieces. Getting my students to get over themselves and stop being afraid of the blank page was a kick in the pants for me. If they could do it, I could. After exhausting that path and burning enough bridges that there was no path backward, I took a huge risk and bet on myself. Instead of fear being something that held me back, I chose to use it to propel me forward into being a full time artist. A former assistant suggested I do this live-art thing and after 15 months of throwing everything I have into it, I’m measuring success with my own set of tools and I can say I’m pleased and proud of my success.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

Who has a smooth road? Is that even a thing? I’m still navigating and building new road when I need it. I leaned into my learning disabilities rather than leaning away from them. I stopped comparing myself to everyone else. I stopped judging myself. I reached out and started to build a community of supportive friends, even if they don’t fully understand what or why I am doing this job, and let go of the people and energy holding me back. I started to be a little more selfish and care a little more about my own wellbeing. Not at the expense of others, but more in service to myself. I also really want my kids to be proud of me for being someone who can acknowledge my own mistakes, struggles, fears, and use them as fuel for future growth. I think I used to think of a successful working artist as someone who was in a gallery show, or in a museum, on a billboard, on everyone who’s anyone’s lips. Then individual people who received my art let me know how much it meant to them. I realized that giving joy to all of these people means a lot to me. I’m like the Dippin’ Dots of art. Very attainable and pretty good.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?

What don’t I do? I travel a lot because the bulk of my work is done live on location in front of an audience. I do live watercolor guest painting, live painting on products for brands, and live painting on canvases. I also have a studio practice of painting for clients from photos. I work with a stationer/papery doing watercolor venue paintings and various motifs. I have done several paintings for clients of loved ones who have died. It’s so meaningful to be a part of people’s lives on this level. What sets me apart, at least what clients tell me, is that looking at their portraits I’ve painted they feel seen a deep and unfamiliar way. I’ve gotten A LOT of hugs, tears, and letters of gratitude that really touch me. I’m proud of the fact that I am the first person to cheer on others. I think it’s important to be supportive of people who are more talented or accomplished than I am. Supporting myself as a professional artists is new to me and so I’m consistently examining my practice and where I can improve and add on. Recently, I began to teach myself how to do surface patterns as I’m hopeful to take my illustration skills into textile and wallpaper design. It’s also important for me to continue to find ways to collaborate with other artists and work together to create.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?

I used to be afraid to take risks. I hate roller coasters, jumping from the high dive, tasting exotic foods, etc. The difference between zero and one is H U G E. Going from thinking I’ll never be a professional artist to, I could be a professional artist to actually being one, took me a lot of time to come to. I was actually afraid of both success and failure as well as both praise and scorn. Allowing myself to be held back by my own fears was a hurdle I needed to jump over. There was risk with knocking over the hurdle, but when I realized that failure is the space where growth comes from it made the risk seems less, well, risky. I used to be afraid of taking a chance on supporting myself under my own steam. I guess I think there are different kinds of risk. Letting go of my ego was a risk that ended up working out at least in the present. Leaving a steady job took a leap of faith. Putting my work on public display was a huge risk for me. Those things kind of go hand in glove, I suppose. Taking a risk can be healthy.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.molliefoxstudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/molliefoxstudio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MollieFoxMakesArt/

Image Credits

I took all of the photos of my work.