Mollie’s new exhibition, Holding Space, is a visual love letter to the people who got her through a period of intense dental pain which required travelling across continents in search of answers and relief …
How do you describe your work?
I am an oil painter, and my paintings depict memories and scenes of my life. They are realistic, but I might dramatise the colour palette (I love autumnal browns and olive greens) or add something eccentric and unrealistic (turning the moon into a disco ball) to bring the emotionality of how I feel or remember things. “Dark humour” has been used to describe it by others, which I don’t mind.
‘For Sara’
What or who was influential to your artistic journey?
I have always naturally always gravitated towards adults and now that I am one, people a generation or two older than me. In the last few years, I have lost a few close friends who were older than me which made me aware of how they impacted me. They have influenced how I want to live my own life. But more importantly, I have valued their friendship and what they taught me, and I hope I taught them things too.
Of course Ireland has been influential. I love Ireland deeply, it is a home in a way that makes me feel like an old woman and child all at the same time, and here I feel like I truly became a painter. The Burren, as a place, was hugely impactful it brought to life parts of myself, I knew were there, just not yet activated.
‘For Ida and Me’
How and where do you work?
I work from home – I have tried studios outside the home, I just end up bringing it all back. I love having my work close and being able to see it all the time, to live with it in progress. My work really comes mainly from my memory now. I may look something up for reference, but I typically just study it for a little bit, put it away and work from memory. I tend to have two good painting sessions in the day with one lull for emails, admin, and looking in the middle. I also thrive in small spaces and in a bit of clutter. Give me a big room, and I’ll find a corner and back tightly in.
‘For the Guild’
What inspired your new exhibition,
Between April of 2023 and January of 2025, I suffered from unexplainable dental pain, which manifested into much more. This period began in West Cork and in searching for answers and relief it brought me to Sweden, Portugal, Utah, and North Dakota. I spent five months in North Dakota back in my childhood basement bedroom. Pain didn’t leave me during those days and only increased. My life became very small, and I was put through mental and physical torture that is difficult to track or explain. I didn’t know how I would get myself back, let alone my career. But with a good support team I am in a better place, Sara Baume was a big part of my healing, and it is only fitting we show together in our own individualistic way.
The paintings I have made for this show are all visual love letters to the people who got me through this period, and scenes I remember from that time. I also made a set of drawings from the offices of medical treatment facilities I visited and remember.
‘For Deb’
You mentioned your collaboration with Sara Baume – can you expand on this?
Sara and I are collaborators in a unique fashion in that we don’t have a hand in each other’s work, but we have a role in each other’s scenes, themes and symbols. Quietly my works downstairs are talking to her works upstairs, like voice notes across an ocean. We are friends which is part of the collaboration, and why it works.
Sara and I first met in 2022 and became fast friends. Our lives were oddly similar, as our interests, and habits, yet we each had things the other wanted. Unknowingly we separately made work about meeting each other; her a piece of writing, me a drawing. Suddenly we realised this made us some type of collaboration, but what grew out of this was a major undertaking by Sara, her next novel, Opening Night (to be published by Granta next year) . As she wrote I ended up including her in my work and something grew. When my pain persisted, she stayed by my side and played a major role in me getting back on my feet.
‘For Mom’
Is there any underlying symbolism in the works?
Loads, for example, For Mom, is when my mom and I met in Utah for a Hail Mary procedure, we drove from Salt Lake City to American Fork Utah in a rental car. Along the way a sign for Vegas was along the Highway and it of broke the ice on what strange measures we were taking to rid me of pain as I turned to her and said “Wanna go to Vegas?” – we both burst out laughing. That moment was full of hope for me, that the pain might go with the procedure to come, so I coated the scene in pink rather than the reality of what we saw of just the highway.
What do you hope visitors will take away from this exhibition?
There are signs of hope, but collectively people are stressed and there are many tragedies unfolding around the world. I hope that this exhibition can offer people some quiet, and enjoyment in the human hand making objects about things they care about and reflect a bit about the value on human friendship and how important that truly is.
Need to Know: Holding Space, an exhibition by Mollie Douthit and Sara Baume is on at the Molesworth Gallery until November 28. 16 Molesworth Street, Dublin 2. The exhibition includes paintings, sculpture and needlework. Douthit’s paintings and their friendship are the subject of Baume’s book, Opening Night, to be published by Granta in 2026. www.molesworthgallery.com @mollie.douthit
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