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Molly  Larson  Cook  Biography

Molly Larson Cook is a San Diego artist with roots in the Pacific Northwest and Maine.  Her career as an artist began officially at Maine College of Art in the early 1990s, but her unofficial beginning came years earlier as a child with crayons, paints and watercolors, a beginning that quickly sealed her future as an abstract expressionist who celebrates color every chance she gets.

Molly studied art and design with a variety of instructors both in Maine and in the art colonies on and near Cape Ann, Massachusetts, in private workshops and in continuing education classes at Montserrat and Endicott Colleges. In the Seattle area, she studied with children’s book illustrator, Dana Sullivan.

In addition to painting and drawing classes, Molly studied the work of classical and contemporary abstract masters in art history courses at both Washington State and Oregon State Universities. Molly’s sense of color and design was enhanced when she worked as a high-end floral designer under the guidance of master florists in Massachusetts and Oregon.

San Diego’s colorful Old Town where Molly now lives and works has played an important role in her development as an abstract expressionist who not only sees but feels and “hears” the colors in her work and in everything that surrounds her. 

Although her art career began several years ago, it came to fruition only over the past few years after she retired from a career mostly focused on writing and teaching.

Molly is a published author with writing credentials as a novelist, an award-winning poet, and in newspaper and magazine articles about art, artists, music and other subjects on both coasts.  Currently, she teaches creative writing for San Diego Writers Ink. Molly says of her work as a painter and writer, “The two feed and inspire each other.”
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A long-time jazz aficionado, Molly credits her love of jazz as the inspiration for the current collection at La Playa Gallery and for her jazz novel, Listen, published in 2003.