When Patti Mollica paints, she uses big brushes and lots of thick paint so her artwork is “fast, loose and bold,” just like the popular workshop she teaches.
“I apply the paint in a very painterly and gestural manner,” said Mollica, who lives outside New York City.
She’ll demonstrate the style that artists clamor to learn from her at Colonie Town Hall on Tuesday, Feb. 7, at an event hosted by the Colonie Art League.
Mollica’s art is representational and a bit whimsical, but not abstract.
“I’m painting real things but it’s a style that could be called very impressionistic and a very painterly type of effect,” said Mollica. “I take lots of liberty with color.”
She likes to choose common themes, like people sitting on the subway or the bustling streets of Manhattan.
“I have a real fondness for geometric shapes so I like doing shadows cast from buildings … anything that has lots of angles,” said Mollica. “It’s not about what the subject is giving us, it’s about what we bring to the party in looking at any subject.”
Before she settled on the in-your-face style that’s become her artistic signature, she created simpler illustrations for well-known companies like American Express, Penguin Press, Hallmark, Sheraton Hotels, CBS and RCA records.
“People hired me … to carry out their artistic vision in their products and their services,” said Mollica. “They basically tell me what they want and I do it.”
That restriction on her creativity eventually started to wear thin and she decided to loosen up and reclaim her artistic happiness.
“I just wasn’t having enough fun in my own painting. … I decided to start using color much more intuitively,” said Mollica. “I threw all that caution to the wind … and my goal was less about creating a masterpiece than having fun.”
Turns out, clients liked her new style just as much and continued to commission her work.
“They now hire me to paint more in this tradition than the tighter approach I used to do,” said Mollica.
She keeps evolving as an artist and these days her paintings are more than just eye-catching splashes of color; they’re full of texture and almost sculptural.
“I found that by the addition of various golden products, gels and mediums that each one would reach with the paint in a very unique way and give me a very different look for each type of paste or gel that I added into my paint or painted on top of,” said Mollica.
During her trip to Colonie, she’ll demonstrate how to master the innovative technique.
“It will be a broad overview on all the various materials that are now available to artists that they can get an enormous array of different results in their artwork,” said Mollica. “The amount of different effects you can achieve in your artwork, it’s limitless.”
Bringing artists like Mollica to the Capital District is an effort Kristen Woodard has worked hard to make a cornerstone of the Colonie Art League.
“We try to keep a mix of artists so that you might have an oil painter or you might have a printmaker or you might have a water colorer,” said Woodard, president of the art league. “We try and have a variety of demonstrators do a variety of things so that we reach as many people as possible.”
Many of the artists the league brings to town aren’t local. For example, in April and May there will be artists visiting from Texas and Vermont.
“They’ll be here for several days doing demonstrations and workshops,” said Woodard.
Taking her lectures and workshops on the road is nothing new for Mollica.
“I’m teaching a workshop in Tuscany in September where we will be applying the ‘fast, loose and bold’ technique to the Italian countryside,” said Mollica.
Mollica will be at Colonie Town Hall on Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 6:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. To see samples of Mollica’s work, visit www.mollicastudio.com or visit her blog at newyorkpainter.blogspot.com.
