Visual artist Molly Bounds on trusting your own decisions

Your paintings often feel like film stills, very cinematic, in that they evoke a mood, a feeling, a tone, so much so that the viewer needs little to no back story to get what’s going on. They are given the liberty to fill in the blanks. What’s your approach to storytelling? How did you learn to tell stories?

It all probably started with my love for comics and graphic novels and how they set up what’s significant. Chris Ware, for example, can set up an entire page with a faucet dripping. Huge close ups of things that feel maybe deeply insignificant, and then repeating that panel until you realize this very small detail really matters. I’m also really inspired by the work of Remy Charlip. He’s a children’s book illustrator, a dancer, a choreographer. He’s one of these artists that leaned into every interest he had. The kind of play he initiates in his stories and children’s books is really world building and world shattering. I wish adults had more access to that level of imagination.

I know you have a background in improv, stand up, and more recently clowning, how does performance art inform your visual art?

My dad is really funny. I grew up with a pretty large access to play in a family [of artists] where it was almost easier to live things through with comedy than with feelings. You know, when you kind of push aside the real conversation, but you lean into the jokes? And then sometimes, in the middle of the joke, you start taking it seriously. And then suddenly we’re crying. I think that’s really powerful.

In high school I did improv. I knew I had funny in the bag a little bit, and that was maybe out of not being able to access certain feelings. When I was in college, I had to make this choice. “Are you an artist, or are you a [comedian]?” I didn’t feel like I had the ability to be both things. And they felt very compartmentalized. They didn’t feel like something that could be married into a person. I actually bombed an art talk so badly before I left Denver, and I was kind of scared of public speaking for the first time in my life, because I was like, “Oh, I just brought the wrong thing to the wrong crowd. Maybe I’m not a performer, like I used to be?” But when I moved to LA, my sister was like, “we’re gonna get you over that hump. I’m gonna sign you up for this weird character class.” Being in a room with people spitballing at the beginning of my day is kind of heaven to me. These spaces of warm ups, automatic process, no bad ideas…We’re just throwing things out there. I always want to approach art from that place.

Molly Bounds, The Plan, 2021

The Idiot Workshop is great. It’s a clown workshop. It’s not a traditional red nose clown. It’s something else entirely. It reminded me how people who could be really commanding in a space, telling an entire story, maybe even exaggerating their experience of being on earth, witnessing a blade of grass or exaggerating their relationship to their own fingers. I loved being able to dive fully into universes that could be created out of play, but very much a serious commitment to a certain reality that you’re creating. And so it just feels like, again, it’s this cropping that’s happening. Really closing in on something that’s so subtle, but it can command a room if you give it the right amount of power. My favorite clowns are deeply subtle people that can build something really slowly. When you lean into that kind of play it’s almost scary to see how much power can be tapped into something completely made up.

Seems like this approach can be recreated in visual art making.

Sometimes I’ll start a painting, maybe with a joking kind of pose because I’m in a funny mood or something. And suddenly, I’ve closed in on it, and I just couldn’t feel more serious. When you look at this mood under a microscope, you can’t see the joke of it anymore. And now it’s a religion. I can’t even take the hat off anymore. I’ve committed to the bit too hard or something. I think it’s funny when things become very serious that way.

Tell me more about motion vs. the still image? When does one inform the other? Why do you make paintings that are so still but feel like they’re in motion? Loose strands of hair, red cowboy boots mid step, to name a few of your arresting images.

I probably would have been an animator or a comic artist, if it wasn’t for how many decisions have to be made. The amount of decisions that have to be made with every single panel feels overwhelming. Choice is something that I struggle with. I’d rather say yes to everything.

Molly Bounds, She’s Here (Red Robe), 2024.

That’s very improv. Saying yes to everything. Right?

I have a hard time trusting my own decisions. I know, that’s not what you want to hear from artists. You want to hear artists say, “I’m going full force into this thing, and I am absolutely sure.” I’m somebody that wants to trust my intuition, but I hesitate. I watch myself hesitate all the time. And really, these automatic processes free me from that. But for the most part, I’m very much emoting in my paintings, something that I’m dealing with in my daily life of making decisions. It comes down to that frustration, that freeze, how quickly time is passing as you’re watching an opportunity, or a decision not being made until it’s made for you and there’s no agency left. So I kind of love to vacillate between hypermobility/agency, versus what does being held hostage look like? I’m interested in seeing these alternate realities, these overlapping possibilities, like doors shutting and opening. The different lives that can be lived and which way one takes you in, which way one doesn’t.

You can never really know what’s going through anyone’s head or what they’re dealing with. Even with relationships, you just kind of don’t know what it’s like until you’re on the inside of it. Maybe that’s why [my paintings] feel like a story that people can relate to because there are so many unanswered questions.

I know you have ADHD. How does it hinder and/or help you navigate the creative process?

I still struggle, but it’s taken me so long to see how ADHD is absolutely a strength for me. I used to be jealous that other people can stick with something for their whole lives, artistically, whether it’s style or one medium. I just feel like I’m that jack-of-all-trades thing, master of none thing where I don’t have this span of attention to deeply master this thing, but if I limit what my attention wants to do, if I limit too strongly, then it’s like I probably never would have done, the Kohler metal residency. I probably never would have gotten into clowning. I think that play is so necessary to find your best ideas. There are so many things I would not have done if my body didn’t need to move as much as it does and be introduced to new things. Maybe I’d be somebody with an office job.

Molly Bounds, With Pleasure (Laura), 2020.

I often get to this point where I’m like, “Oh, no. I can feel it happening again. I have to try a new medium.” I have to in order to keep my own attention. It’s as if I’m babysitting myself. But that’s such a strength, actually. My favorite artists didn’t stop themselves from really getting involved with anything that they found interesting. I love to see artists take those breaks and just pay respect to their own multifaceted attention spans. I think it’s good to honor where your attention is going.

I don’t want to follow every single thread because then it would be truly like, “What can I get done?” I do have to watch myself with that. But I think it’s so important to honor where your interests are going. More and more we have to be practical. “How do I support myself while being this kind of person?” But knowing and being good at multiple trades and skills usually isn’t going to hurt you down the line, It’s gonna be useful in different spaces.

How do you approach deadlines? Do you have any advice for other artists with ADHD?

I think it helps to have daily check-ins with the self. Writing in a journal. Starting my day watering plants or gardening and getting my hands in the dirt is very grounding for me and calms my nervous system. Everybody’s got their coping mechanisms. Nobody should just be pacing at all hours of the day. When I’m pulling weeds, it’s a form of meditation, an active meditation.

Specifically with ADHD, it’s deeply necessary for me to reframe my relationship to structure and discipline. So much of my early learning experience was feeling shame for what I couldn’t align with, what I was lacking. Now, discipline in my life connotes the practices and routines that sustain me, support my overall health and wellbeing. My structure is making to-do lists every night, setting alarms (so many alarms), saying no to others when I need to say yes to myself.

It’s hard to set boundaries. I still struggle with it. It feels like a monk’s perseverance sometimes, to turn away a fun new thing and to hunker down on the thing that I know I need to get done. Routine is something that I lean on. My art club. Drawing night. When these things go away, I really feel it, and it seems to affect everything.

Molly Bounds, The Process (Stephanie), 2022.

Molly Bounds, The Process (Elongated), 2022.

I would love to hear a bit more about your relationships with different mediums. What was your time like at the Kohler Residency? What did you learn about yourself as an artist?

What I learned was, “Wow, I’m so strong.” I can push 300 pounds! That residency was Something that asked a lot of the body. It was actually really exciting. I’ve been in a lot of spaces. This one was mostly male dominated. Factory culture. I was pretty committed to making whirligigs and things that could spin in somebody’s yard. It was exciting to pick up something so new. I would have never guessed, while making that work, and the experience of making it, how much I would be so precious about it afterward. Now I look back on that experience, and how hard it was. Makes me appreciate the things I made even more. I’m not going to have an easy time letting go of any of that work because I’m scared of losing the fond memory that came with making it. It was this camaraderie with our other members in the residency. The people that we met in the factory became such friends. It’s intimidating to come into a factory setting as a newcomer. I’ve never been around any of this machinery. It’s all deeply dangerous. We got forklift certified. We watched insane safety videos. The whole thing felt overwhelming. But I came out of it thinking, “Wow, I was capable of that.” And now I just want to go back.

Your work was famously featured on the US cover of Normal People by Sally Rooney. How did this commercial success change the trajectory of your career?

I was really excited because I initially wanted to make books. During my time as a print maker, I got really into zines and zine making and rare artist books and collecting. I would host these events where I was trying to get everybody I knew to make small art books. Everybody was churning out something they hadn’t made before. An excuse to have a deadline helps people make things. Who would I be if I didn’t have a deadline?

I’ve always had an affinity for the tactile art book. So it was surreal to find out that my art was going to be on the cover of a book. A book that I didn’t even get to read first. I didn’t even know who the author was. It didn’t really change my life, other than it created an even stronger bond to art and books.

Does this book resonate with me, though? You can’t really check. It’s kind of a mystery bag. It used to make me nervous. I don’t even know what the book’s about, but here’s an image. That’s really fun. I feel really fortunate and very lucky to have gotten to do the cover of something that was really successful.

I haven’t made a book of my art yet. For some reason it’s daunting. I don’t know how to make these decisions. It’s a lot of decisions. So, I’ve put it off. I’d like to hand it over to somebody I trust and be like, “Don’t even ask me anything, because I’ll just be like a bundle of not knowing.”

Molly Bounds, Burlesque, 2022.

Aside from money, what are the rewards of a creative practice? What do you get out of this work and what has it taught you about yourself?

I think there’s a lot of dignity even if there’s no money. I think there’s a lot of dignity in creating something that you feel compelled to make. Growing up with artist parents that struggled financially, they were very deeply worried for me carving out a similar path as them. I just think that there’s such dignity in following a poetic way of life and honoring that, and it can absolutely be a struggle. Of course, you have to find other routes sometimes. You have to have simultaneous multitasking skill trades. You have to be able to pivot. But the scarier thing to me, than being poor is not listening to that intuitive process and kind of squelching out the flame. I just think it’s a slippery slope. Maybe that’s alarmist of me to say, but I think it’s a slippery slope to fall out of your artistic practice sometimes and step away from it. I don’t want to lose this voice and this access to my most powerful form of agency. It’s just a scary thing to have to chip away at. Sometimes I’ll take a month off of painting and the fear sets in and suddenly I’m like, “Oh my God. I hate this feeling.” It’s spooky, you know?

I know.

I would so much rather just carry a sketchbook with me every day. I carry one with me everywhere I go. It’s the closest thing I have to a security blanket. Maybe the sketchbook gets smaller and smaller, but I really can’t let this go. If I’m taking a trip or I’m doing anything, I need to have it. Sometimes when I’m out and I don’t have a sketchbook, and I’m witnessing something, I try so hard to remember every detail of this thing I’m looking at. “Is it possible to just remember this person’s face? Is it possible to remember it for later?” The agency that an artistic life grants me to be able to answer to a desire like that, it’s too empowering to leave behind. It’s funny that I make so much work about not being able to make up my mind but the one thing I can make up my mind about very much is that I have to make art.

I feel the same way about taking notes. If I don’t have anything to take notes on, I feel like I lose my mind. I’m constantly taking notes because it feels like note taking is tricking my mind into thinking I’m not writing, but I’m actually writing because I’m taking notes. Even if I’m running away from it, I’m actually still always doing it.

I used to be really bad. I used to not be able to go on a vacation without bringing a scanner.

What do you do when you feel discouraged and uninspired to make art?

Reading is usually what brings me back [from a funk]. Or going to a live performance. Experiencing something with a group of people. It’s so easy to be isolated in my studio, arms crossed, thinking about how the world is so fucked. Instead, get yourself in a room full of people.

Molly Bounds, Leech’s Way, 2024.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Diana Ruzova.