When Worlds Collide
Butler Gallery, Kilkenny
Jan. 27-March 24, 2024
This exhibition was a forging of two distinct bodies of work, the first based on memories from my grandparent’s lake home. The second body of paintings come from the more current events in my life. Below is the text written by Anna O'Sullivan from the Butler Gallery.
Butler Gallery is very pleased to present When Worlds Collide, a solo exhibition of recent work by the Irish-based, USA born artist, Mollie Douthit.
Mollie Douthit explores ideas of intimacy, domesticity and memory in her work. Her paintings celebrate everyday moments and personal experiences where her singular sense of humour prevails. Her paintings of interiors are representations of the sensory and remembered qualities of space and objects sourced from the visual filing cabinet of her mind.
“As works of auto-fiction, the process of painting has developed my awareness of memory’s fragility and truth’s flexibility…. As I develop the work, I try to make an object or space as emotive as it is in my mind. I notice the distance between the actual event and its existence as memory—one operates in the physical world, the other in the mental place; the act of painting bridges these two. Though these memories are my own, I trust that my process of remembering and imagining translates to something universal”. From Douthit’s Artist Statement on her website.
Over time Mollie has developed a palette distinctly her own, expressing emotion using saturated vibrant colours, reminiscent of technicolour films from childhood. The body of work exhibited is mostly drawn from memories of Mollie’s beloved grandparent’s uniquely designed holiday home, situated on Pelican Lake in Minnesota, where Mollie spent summers as a child in the 1980s and ‘90s. It was a magical world that firmly remains in her mind as a place of hope and love.
In 2022, Mollie met her Swedish husband Arvid and he has had a significant impact on her life, cracking it wide open for her and creating even more overlap in life and work. The relationship has encouraged her to be more open and fluid with her days, something reflective in a number of these new paintings.
Mollie Douthit enjoys a simple quiet life outside Ballydehob, West Cork, where living and working takes place in a studio/home cabin situated down a winding boreen. Here, the closeness of nature provides her with a quality of life that informs her exceptional paintings.
Photo credit: Ros Kavanagh
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