Molly Rose Freeman
November 15, 2018: Molly Rose Freeman is originally from Durham, NC but now makes her home in Atlanta. She received her high school diploma in Visual Arts from the North Carolina School of the Arts. Her BA in Creative Writing is from the University of North Carolina. Molly has painted murals with many organizations including Living Walls and the Atlanta Beltline. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and W Hotels are just two of Molly’s many clients.
Moving from small rigid and confined environments to large and open interactive environments seems to be a recurring theme for Molly. For example she transitioned from a rigid parochial school environment that wasn’t a good fit for her to the NC school for the arts where she thrived. A similar transition also played out in her artistic journey that took her from highly detailed studio work to large-scale mural work around Atlanta and around the world. A two-week trip to Miami in 2011 accelerated her journey. There she assisted some muralists and decided to become a muralist herself. Getting outside of the studio allowed Molly to interact with the overall environment and with the people within that environment. Or as she put it in a 2015 interview with Word of Mouth: “I prefer to make something in the world rather than alone in my studio.” Interaction, collaboration, and establishing personal connections are an integral part of Molly’s work.
A key waypoint in Molly’s journey into spaces, colors and patterns came when Molly’s mom took her to Italy for 3 weeks as a college graduation present. The experience of being inside of cathedrals with their myriad of patterns from the stained glass windows to the vaulting in the ceilings was viscerally soothing and comforting. From than moment on, Molly wanted to re-create these environments through her work.
Molly’s work centers around patterns. She likes to work in radial patterns starting in the center and allowing the pattern to organically and naturally grow outward. Everything in the work is interconnected and interdependent. Molly described her love for patterns in the same 2015 interview with Word of Mouth: “My language is pattern, light, space and movement. Why patterns affect me so deeply is still a mystery. They bypass my brain and go straight into my bloodstream.” In a 2014 Burnaway interview, Molly described an epiphany that solidified the importance of patterns for her: “Years ago, I was doing more traditional figurative and still life paintings. All of the objects were embellished with pattern. It got to the point where I was like, “This is ridiculous, I don’t even care about the thing that I’m painting. I only care about the patterns.”
Link to Molly Rose Freeman’s website: http://mollyrosefreeman.com
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