“The only work really worth doing — the only work you can do convincingly —
is the work that focuses on the things you care about.
To not focus on those issues is to deny the constants in your life.”
— Bayles and Orland, Art and Fear

This relatively simple idea is, in a different way, huge for an artist. Most of us are, after all, as complicated as every other human and affected by the changing winds of the world.

The pandemic has given us pause, and way more time to think about what matters, to even search our artists’ souls than we anticipated. We’ve been pushed to walk through a forest without a map and in the process have discovered more than we expected.

Some artists have discovered NFTs as a way to gain huge publicity with or without huge return, though some of those returns have boggled the rest of us.

Some artists have shut down more or less completely, vowing to paint again when things are better. If they ever are.

Some of us have experimented with ideas completely new and others have stayed with the same familiar subjects, often without much success or energy or the old sense of gratification.

For many of us, spending time with our art was a respite and refuge from all else that was going on, and yet the pandemic and lockdowns seem to have demanded something from us, something surprising that we were not prepared to give.

Fortunately, though, the pandemic also pushed us all to focus. Without the usual distractions — places to go, people to see, things to do — we were called back to ourselves. And for me, at least, to big questions. Would galleries open again? Would I be able to invite people to my studio? Would I have another show?

All driving questions that had, in the past, influenced my work.

Was I painting just for myself now? And if so, why?

So here’s what happened for me. After taking tentative steps in other directions, I returned again and again to jazz as my subject. The thing I care about. Not the instruments or images in the tunes, but the colors of jazz. I don’t hear music and think of colors. It’s the opposite for me. I see colors and think of jazz.

I’m not a musician although I did study jazz vocal for a few months with the wonderful Jay Clayton. I was writing a novel about a girl singer and wanted to get the feeling of it. When Jay told me I was ready and invited me to do a public performance in Seattle, I got very cold feet, Popsicle Toes, and demurred. But I had enough to finish and publish the novel, Listen.

The main thing that changed for me during the pandemic was that I slowed down. I stopped creating a painting every few days and had time, took time, to work more slowly. Without a deadline, I experimented with media and caught my breath after four shows — three in San Diego and one in Oregon — in three years.

Becoming an artist has been a late-in-life joy for me. The studio truly was a refuge during the pandemic and continues to be as we make our way back to something more familiar.

My studio is in a building with other work spaces, mostly offices and not studios. My business cards with one of the paintings are outside my door. With the pandemic, we have not seen much of each other, my neighbors and I. But one day recently, I was in the hallway when a woman approached me to ask if I was Molly.

She hesitantly told me that her daughter in grade school, still being taught remotely, had an assignment to write an essay about an artist. She didn’t know about other artists, and with everything closed during the pandemic, had no place to go look at art. But she had seen my card, so she and her mom had taken one. They looked me up and I became the subject of a school essay.

Selling my work is always a pleasure, but becoming the subject of a school essay was a first and took me to a different happy place. So, Ruthie, if you happen to read this, thank you. I’ll swap you a painting for a copy of your essay anytime.

Life and art and jazz continue to be a joy, no matter what.