Painter Molly Mansfield studies the spaces we inhabit and the tablescapes that define our domestic lives. Mansfield employs a wet on wet approach to painting in oil, laying down gestural brush strokes and often leaving some areas less developed than others. Molly’s practice is one of observation, but also imagination. She paints primarily from life, using her experiences, surroundings, and generational history as a starting point. Her still life paintings often focus on the table—a gathering place and a place for connection, sharing, and vulnerability. She typically creates a composition using family heirlooms: dishes, vintage fabrics, half finished quilts of women from past decades.

Q:   Your work is driven by your love of the oil painting medium and obsession with color and pattern. What makes you love oil paint so much? 

A:  Oil painting is a sensory, whole body experience. The way it feels on the canvas, gliding like smooth butter, to its rich and deep colors, to the distinct smells of the linseed oils and mediums. The process of oil painting is a beautiful feeling, one that can transport you to another space entirely.

Q:  Can you take us through your painting process? Do you start with sketches or do you jump right into painting? 

A:  I set up the still life in my studio and make thumbnail sketches in my sketchbook, working through compositions. The process of placing objects and arranging patterns I find to be very interesting, particularly objects that I have made or other women have made, such as quilts, and engaging with them in a new way-through painting.

Q:  Your studio was featured on HGTV Handmade! Can you tell us about your studio and what it was like to be on HGTV? 

A:  One day we were sitting on the couch and my husband looked over and asked, “do you want a school bus?” Someone had offered it to him and we felt like it’s not everyday that a school bus falls into your lap, so we turned it into my backyard studio. We gutted it, installed a wood floor, put in a long desk, and viola! Working in a small space, I had to set up my still life right next to my easel. Towering over the still life and sometimes stepping back to look at it, I started drawing it from multiple perspectives. So the schoolie studio is to credit for the feeling of multiple perspectives in my still life paintings.

Q:  Do you have a favorite artist or artists?

A:  I love Cezanne and his use of form and composition. As a kid, we had this Cezanne paperback and I would spend hours pouring over it.

A:  Do you have a favorite piece in the collection you created for Set the Table? 

Q:  Purple Mushroom, Pink Cabbage. I just love the title of this piece and the way it flows. The variations of the color plum in that painting intrigue me with the plant coming in from the background. The leaf motif and desert rose pattern on the plate are some of my favorite things and recurring themes in my paintings. And the little bunny and duck mini quilt is something I’ve had my whole life, made by my grandmother-a person who wasn’t in my life a whole lot because she lived out of state, but who I've always felt a deep connection to.