Judy Molyneux

Member of The Outsiders

California Coast near Montera

16" x 20" oil

"Judy Molyneux's exciting canvases are complex compositions of intense color, movement, vitality, spontaneity, and heavily layered pigments which yield paintings that can be almost abstract in nature, yet capture the true nature of a place and time all the more wonderfully for that. She wields paint, pallet knife and brush with a fresh perspective and a 'joie de vivre' that create landscapes that are exciting in their depth and vibrant richness."

Surfers Changing by their Cars I

30" x 24" oil

Surfers Changing by their Cars II

24" x 30" oil

Downtown SF

14" x 18" oil

Surfers Loading Up

20" x 24" oil

California Coast, Rocks & Light

30" x 40" oil

People with Beach Blanket

sold

Incoming Tide, Leaving the Beach

12" x 36" oil

Mt. Tamalpias

sold

Surfers Rounding the Corner

12" x 16" oil

$3000

The following article is reprinted from The Plein Air Scene, in which Judy was a Featuired Artist.

Plein air painter, arts organizer and fund raiser for numerous worthy causes, Judy Molyneaux resides in Bolinas. Her vivid and dynamic paintings are reminiscent of Van Gogh in Provence. Her work resides in many public and private collections. She is a member of the "Outsiders"

“When I was three my older sister put on a circus. I was to be a duck. That seemed easy enough. You just have to squat and waddle on the grass. But something happened at that moment. It's hard to describe, but essentially the green of the grass shot through my soul, riveting me to the earth. To break the spell of something so "terrifyingly" beautiful, I immediately rose up. Shaking my head, I twirled about and looked up into the sky. The earth and sky began their crazy dance - this same dance that's been haunting me ever since.

My early years growing up in Wisconsin were divided between a college town and a farm on a lake. My twin sister and I were often left to drift in a row boat/play pen. I like to think that some of my fascination with brilliant light and pulsating movement stems from this early experience. Not long after,,we moved East following the rise of my father's teaching career, his restless discontent and underlying yearning to return to "The Farm" of my childhood. My painting career was stimulated as much by my grandfather's offer to pay me the handsome sum of a nickel for a drawing of his beloved diamond-paned front door, as it was by the many days and nights working the farm, planting rows of tomatoes in the dusk, pitching hay in the searing heat, racing the tractor back to the barn just ahead of thunderstorms.

My art "education" began with sneaking into my older sister's bedroom to check out her extensive collection of art reproductions. What amazing beauty I found there.

Years later on my way to becoming an English teacher, essentially following in my parents'; footsteps, I found myself painting - painting old men in the style of Rembrandt, painting scenes of the Maine Coast during summer vacations, mixing sand with pigment between crazy necking sessions with one great love-of-my-life after another.

A gallery owner from a small town near Chicago (by this time I was enrolled in a college in the heart of Michigan) saw my work and asked me if I wanted to show in his gallery. After the opening, my mother rescued me from an academic life by asking me if I wanted to go to a proper art school. Somewhere in her Victorian soul, this woman who wouldn't allow me to be a dancer, was finally giving in to my obsession with paint and brush and letting go of her fear of Bohemian life.

The "proper" art school was the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where I earned both a BFA and an MFA and the shaky right to teach other young aspirants the rudiments of my chosen profession. I taught for just one year and a summer in a small liberal arts college in Georgia, and then made my break for the big city- my wild beatnik life - though by now beat had shifted to hippy, and San Francisco was the city of dreams. Forever painting, I delved deep into the human psyche. It wasn't until I moved to Bolinas and was struck dumb by the beauty of the light and the movement of the fog that I began to paint the earth again.

I met Jerry Turner in 1986 when I put on a blockbuster show I entitled "The Bay Area Seen". Jerry's slides won my heart, and he in turn introduced me to Terry St. John, Louis and Lundy Siegriest, Pam Glover - the list goes on. Jerry's fresh paintings were an inspiration to me, and not long after I went out rambling with him and tried his thing - plein air painting. I've been hooked ever since. Not that I paint this way all the time, but I do it enough to feel that it is a major part of my artistic life. I love to paint. To paint is to dream. To dream is to be a rock, a tree, the wide sea and beyond.”