February 10, 2021
“I’m thinking a lot about the ways we are connecting with each other and the ways we aren’t. I’m thinking about the casual ways we used to touch each other, be close to one another, and the way that that suddenly feels dangerous. I’m thinking about isolation and points of connection. I’m thinking about what it even means to make art at this moment in time. I’m playing with the way things travel, the way watercolor travels, the way aerosols travel. I’m trying to make sense of our new normal. I think I’m probably mourning the physical intimacy we can’t experience safely at the moment."
Segal’s works on paper depict oil fields, fires, sinkholes, bones, thistles, and migrating birds amidst a landscape depleted and scarred by industry and drought. With a delicate and deft hand, her watercolors explore the human psyche in relation to the environmental devastation of California. Using a muted, pastel palette, Segal turns her adept perception to a dystopian vision that writer Daviel Shy describes as provoking “a visceral response in the viewer. One feels part of the muck, implicated. And yet there is still pleasure that comes with the spectacle.”
This balance of pleasure and despair runs through the works in Marrow Sucker. The viewer is reminded of the compromises we make for comfort, our deep desire for connection and the toll of social isolation. Thistles emerging out of barbed wire, flocks of birds escaping wildfire, and decomposing animals feeding the flowers serve as reminders of our interconnectedness. These are small and poetic odes to resilience.
A series of abstracted figurative works speak to the yearning and danger of connection in the midst of a global pandemic. Otherwise muted in palette, the points of connection are brightly charged and leave the boundaries between one body and another ambiguous. The viewer is left to wonder whether these couples are healing or infecting one another. What is the Marrow Sucker? Segal writes, “There is something both decadent and desperate about sucking the marrow. I have always thought of it as a means to squeeze every pleasure available out of life. But it is also literally picking at bones and sucking them dry.”
Written by Coe Lapossy
Molly Segal (b. 1983, Oakland, CA) Molly Segal received an MFA from The School of The Museum of Fine Arts in 2013. Her paintings have appeared in group exhibitions at Charlie James Gallery, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, PØST, Northeastern University, and Zevitas Marcus. Her work and writing have been featured in publications Full Blede, Venison Quarterly, Beautiful Decay, and Lapham’s Quarterly. Segal has taught at CSU Long Beach, Tufts University, SMFA, and currently teaches at Golden West College. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
