Portfolio: Molly Rausch

by Brian K. Mahoney, January 12, 2009

Molly Rausch is an artist of the everyday. She paints mundane things—chairs, radios, step ladders, garage-door openers—elevating their status above their normal station in the hierarchy of objects. A lamp’s craning neck takes on the tristesse following a break-up. A bathtub evokes pleasurable solitude, misunderstood by others as loneliness.

Rasuch’s paintings are often more about what’s left out than what’s included, whether it’s the absence of figures or the enigmatic snippets of text that reference larger conversations. Her paintings at once express concerns about the limits of communication—your thoughts on an empty chalkboard, Dr. Freud?—as well as the inability to effectively use the tools available to relate to others. The personal gravity of Rausch’s work prevents it from escaping the orbit of its self-reference, while looking wistfully toward a genuine connection it might be incapable of.

A new, whimsical direction in Rausch’s work is her altered typewriters, in which the keys are rearranged to encode a message. (Note the keys on Royal Lark on page 33.)
Recent paintings by Rausch are being exhibited as part of a group show at Carl Van Brunt Gallery in Beacon through January 5. www.vanbruntgallery.com.