Today we’d like to introduce you to Molly Mae
Hi Molly , please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
As a very neurodivergent child, I couldn’t process and interact with the world as other children could. Thankfully, I was homeschooled, a wild place to let imagination free, away from expectation. But still, I couldn’t read till I was 15, so the visual arts were and still are a huge form of communication for me. It was a family friend who noticed my gravitation towards art and recommended a tutor for me, starting a spiral, but the good kind.
Beginning as an apprentice in fine art at age seven, has molded me into the multimedia artist I am today. Fast forward seven-teen years and still just as neurodivergent, life has made my interaction with art and creation innate to my personhood and has helped me translate my experiences of grief, loss, connection, and home.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Yes and no. I was a child prodigy. So it felt easy when I was young, I accomplished a lot, and people pay attention to you when you’re gifted. But when you become an adult, it’s totally different. I did art full time for 2-3 years as an adult and completely hated it because of the isolation it brings and the heavy expectation of succeeding as a former gifted child. When I told people in my art community that I was getting a part time retail job, they thought that I failed at being an artist.
There was also the deep, deep struggle of losing my art tutor when I was 17. She was like a grandma to me and unexpected loss threw me into a world I couldn’t mentally process, developing complex ptsd from it. I can’t remember the years after her death but I get a window to it through the one thing I’ve always had: my art. My paintings and creations from that time period are few, but telling.
In all my years in the arts, it feels like I have been many things, filled many roles: child prodigy, highly masked neurodivergent, gifted teen, burnt out professional, art cynic, an adult that feels that I peaked too young. Not including the role I am now, which at this time, is unnamed.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am mainly an acrylic fine art painter, working mostly on canvas that I stretch myself. But I also have emerged into mural work in the last few years and that’s an area I hope to grow.
Florals and people are a constant in my work, but in the years following my tutors death, the topic of people have come to the forefront of my work. Oddly they are the best way my intentions and introspections are translated, communicating my interactions with grief, discovery, connection, and home.
Color is also a very important piece to my work, as I use it liberally yet thoughtfully, intentionally interacting with the main subject of each painting.
Thinking about it now, I realize a lot of my work revolves around life, and how we interact with it.
What am I proud of? There is probably a lot I should be proud of, (I have a painting in a museum in SD which is a huge win) but I can’t think of anything. I’m not trying to be humble, but creating is intrinsic to to my being, so being proud of something isn’t my automatic response. I can say that I haven’t always liked my own work, but the work I have been producing as of late I am very content and pleased with, so maybe that is an answer?
I think my perspective sets me apart, molded through my life experiences: being neurodivergent, dealing with grief, my desire to bring care to the creative community.
What’s next?
I am working on a solo show for 2026, focusing on my experience of loss and grief and how universal, yet unmentioned it is.
In this next year, along with my fine art paintings, I am working on more murals!
But as much as I am working on visual creating, I want to pursue all aspects of creating and its many forms, I think there’s so much expansion there that many artists overlook. Creating is everywhere. I strive to push the common narrative of the artist and the expectations that follow. With that in mind, I hope to bring more perspective to my creative community. In what way, I’m still fleshing that out. For starters, I’ve begun a newsletter, called Breath & Decay, to play around with these ideas and talk about art and such!
I’m drawn to traditional practices and crafts. I want to stretch my own canvas, grow my own food, use a pencil versus digital, I want to swap microbes with the dirt of my garden, carve wood, and make my own kimchi. Does this all have anything to do with my creative career? Some may say no, but to me they are so interwoven, they are one and the same, there is no way I couldn’t pursue one without the other. There is only one degree of separation, with the common thread being the act of creation. I think that there will be many big changes but all will stay consistent as long as I’m creating.
I want to keep working, growing and serving for as long as I can, where that will lead me, I have no clue.
Pricing:
- I prefer people to contact me directly for pricing!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mollymaeart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mollymae.art/
