MOLLY LARSON COOK / SELECTED ARTWORK / BIOGRAPHY / ARTIST STATEMENT / INTERVIEW / PAST EXHIBITIONS
Molly Larson Cook Artist Statement
“Color is an animal that wags its own tail.”
Perhaps it was the 50-color paint set my grandmother bought me when I was nine that got me started as an artist. Or perhaps it was the technicolor movies, especially the ones by Walt Disney, who animated music with color. Or it may have been my first college art history class where I fell in love with the wild and vivid colors of Raoul Dufy and the Fauves (as well as my art history professor) when I was eighteen. Whatever it was, despite work with charcoal and pastels, clay, collage, or pen and ink, I’ve been hooked on color ever since.
As an artist, poet, performer and jazz aficionado, I’m particularly interested in how color and rhythm come together in the painted, spoken or musical expression of an artistic creation. I’m especially drawn to abstract expressionism which allows me to experiment and create within the boundaries I set for myself. Abstract expressionism also invites viewers to write the narrative, to discover their own stories, poems or songs in a painting.
I live in San Diego where the nexus of Latin and Polynesian cultures means color, color, everywhere from the beautiful aloha shirts to the festive costumes of Mexican dancers every Sunday in my neighborhood.
As a self- and studio-taught artist, I have training in art and art history from Maine College of Art, Montserrat College of Art in Massachusetts, Oregon State University and workshops on both coasts from Cape Ann on the Atlantic to San Diego on the Pacific. In my “other life,” I’m an award-winning poet/writer and former actress who keeps her hand and her heart in all corners of the creative world. Before working full time as an artist, I taught creative writing and published a jazz novel, Listen. I continue to teach occasionally and to write about jazz. I take both my painting and the music seriously, and I listen to live jazz any chance I get.