The Fine Print — Molly McCutcheon

1 on 1 Art Chat

Introducing Molly McCutcheon, a rising name in the art scene. Hailing from a small town in Ohio, her minimal drawing style currently employs charcoal, ink, and an ongoing dialog with shadow and light.

All this is deeply influenced by dreams, science, philosophy, nature, and mathematics: which serve as muse and mirror, reflecting a narrative that’s as multifaceted as she is.

I recently sat down with Molly and we spoke about her art journey, technique, influences, Lebron James (of course), and finding your second burst —

BanAnakin -

Let’s jump into it! Tell me about your current collection or the work you’re doing right now…

Molly McCutcheon -

Art is like this vessel for me right now that I’m putting all of my trust into… A whole lot. It’s an interesting time period I’m going through in my life. I would say, out of the overall work I’ve done in the last year, I’ve probably only shared maybe like 60% of it online, but, what I’m making right now is made with all different kinds of charcoal, all different kinds of ink and graphite, and all that, and then I’ve done some experiments using other mediums like ashes.

When I sold my first piece and then a second one and then another one, in such a rapid period of time, I was like — what the hell, This is changing my life a little bit! My art was purely just an escape from my reality, like truly, but it’s also not a new escape. Since I was like 4 or 5 years old I was drawing all the time… so this just felt like something familiar, and at the same time like something new.

and I think that especially with this era of my art right now, the art that I’m creating, like dude, I realize my perspective has changed a lot, my brain has changed in a good way. From what I perceived the world to be like when I was in school, before basketball took over my life, which was a long time ago, this art I’m creating now is teaching me more about myself and about the world, it’s almost like addicting in a sense… like I cannot say no right now. I can’t decide “I’m gonna do something different tomorrow” because it draws me into it. It calls me into it, if that makes sense. It’s this phenomenon right now that I’m putting all my trust into.

BanAnakin -

How would you describe your style? You work with charcoal and ink, right? Is it all digital or does It start out as real as a real tangible piece of art?

Molly -

The final finished piece, 99% of the time, is just a scanned image of the physical with nothing added to it whatsoever. My genesis piece, “The First Light Wave”, was an 11” by 14” piece — it was about 97% of what you see in the physical and then I added in Tjo’s CC0 “BLeU”. You know, Tjo’s famous piece “BLeU” was super massive at the time that I created and sold my genesis and I added it to give this ricochet affect, a type of physics message. And that was months ago, but to be honest, that’s one of the only pieces I’ve created that has not been 100% exactly what the physical piece looks like. And now everything I’m putting out right now is exactly what the physical looks like with barely any lighting changes from scanning the image..

The First Light Wave

BanAnakin -

How do you describe your style to someone who hasn’t seen your work before?

Molly -

I’m still figuring out my style, and it’ll always evolve for as long as I’m creating, but I think right now the only thing that is able to be categorized is the black and white. Shaded charcoal and ink, and then scanned. But right now I’m riffing off many ideas and I’m just straight up creating whatever the fuck I can think of in my head, and try to express it on paper. My art reflects my mind and brain: what I ponder throughout my day. Right now that has been a lot of science, quantum physics, and mathematical things that exist in the universe.

I’m also coming from a philosophy and political science background. It all feels like I’m going on a rocket ship right now, my mind cannot stop being curious about things. People tell me when they look at my work they get like this perspective that makes them ponder philosophical thoughts and then you see geometry in my work, you see figures in my work, sometimes landscapes… and it stands for a whole lot more then what it stands for, which is everything, but that doesn’t really answer the question!

Losing My Reductionist Mind

BanAnakin -

No, that’s a great answer! One thing I think of when I see your art is the open space. With a lot of art, especially in the circles we run in, I see that the canvas is always full. The image is always full, the dimensions have a color, they have a shape, they have a design, they have a background, the background has a background, there’s something happening on every part of the piece. You are one of the few artists I’m familiar with that has, and allows, open or blank space in their work. No color, no marks, I think it’s awesome.

Molly -

Open space, negative space is still something, because when you think of nothing, you feel something. And that concept, in and of itself, is one of the hardest things to grasp your mind around. I personally would like to trigger or evoke emotions in a very exotic way. I don’t see a whole lot of work like that in the space, and if I do see work like that, I’m probably sharing it with everyone because it excites me.

When I’m in the process of creating, and letting things unfold in my head, I will sit with my pieces for 10 hours straight all throughout the night. I spend time walking around looking at the piece from different angles, sitting with it, staring at it, and I make discoveries: something I wanted to feel… and then dive back into it. I’ve always been a very meticulous writer, I taught myself how to use a pencil before any teacher did, and I was really young and I’ve never held my pencil in a way that’s super correct to normal people, I guess because I like everything very close to the edge, like I hold it really close to like the tip of it, you know, in a way that looks weird. But the thing is, I do that because I’m like super hyper focused on what I’m doing and that allows me to work with negative space really well, it’s almost like an efficient way to work with it.

BanAnakin -

I like the less is more approach to art. Whether it’s intentional or not, it is interesting. When I see that I sense some kind of confidence. It makes a statement. Ok, so do you remember the banana with the duct tape from Art Basel a couple years back, like that sold for over 100 grand, like $120,000. And it is just a banana with the piece of duct tape over it, like the confidence to put that out, or like Andy Warhol with the Campbell’s soup cans like, okay, I’m just gonna paint some soup cans cause I ate a lot of soup when I was a kid and here you go, I’m gonna display it here, put it on the wall, there you go, that’s art, deal with it.

Molly -

There is a swag or energy to it that’s hard to achieve, you know. It’s a built up product of how much you believe in yourself, in what you create. In the space there are many examples of this, some of the most well known and highest selling pieces are in essence very minimal and “simple”.

BanAnakin -

Would you call your work so far a collection or a series? Are they part of something bigger, interconnected, or is it all separate?

Molly -

That’s a really great question. So, and I know we recently talked about Picasso, but pick an artist, any artist. Say there’s a successful artist and their body of work has had time to just sit in the world for a while and people look over the work and look over their life, and then you start to hear things like, “oh, yeah, that was his Cubist era” or “that was his blue and red era”, or something. So, with that in mind I don’t think I consider any of my pieces to be part of a series right now, or part of a collection right now. I am more focused on making sure that each piece I make is right, like it’s the right piece. It’s the right time, it’s the right day. It’s every fucking bit all that…

…because what I realize is that if I focus on my work, like with the pieces I’ve sold thus far, I’ve been able to discover they are telling a story, their own story, and if I do that with the rest of my pieces, and then, when I’m old, and looking back at all my shit, or if I die it’ll all just a part of the bigger story, or a bigger like quote-on-quote series, right? But at the moment I would say they’re all just like one by one individual pieces right now. I create for me, then I share.

BanAnakin -

You mentioned the pieces you make are 11 x14. Will you go bigger? So, I’m having a thought here, my first reaction is, if I’m an artist and I want to have stuff in a gallery, maybe bigger is better. Easier to see, lmao, I don’t know…

Molly -

That’s a great question. I thought about this, too, and I feel like it doesn’t have to be a certain size to be in the best gallery in the world, like, you know, but regardless I do know I wanna work with bigger sizes and I also want to work with smaller sizes. I think that’s definitely in the future, though, I’m excited for when that time comes.

BanAnakin -

Alright, I’m gonna take a step back on my giant canvas idea, because my first thought is that I would want my art in the gallery to be huge, so people could see it, cause I guess I have a big ego or something. That’s the first thing I thought. But, now my next thought is that, let’s say you get a giant canvas, you start making art on that. If you don’t usually work on that size stuff, It’s gonna change the way your art is made. It’s gonna change the movement of your hands, the way you move over the piece, the perspective, the way that you physically make the art is going to be different because the size is different. So then, the art is going to be different,

And then I was thinking what we were talking about here with the open space and the negative space, like kind of like, quiet confidence in the work. So now I’m rethinking my original reaction.

Molly -

Yeah, I think that’s the thing too, right? A lot would change if I worked with bigger tools. And if it’s gonna be larger, then you know, it has to be substantially bigger than 11 x14. It would have to be like, super big! It would change everything about the process, but right now I’m really really enjoying 11 x 14.

BanAnakin -

Do your creative ideas come to you during the day, ahead of time? Do you take a mental note and remember them or is it the opposite where you sit down with your tools and then as you draw the inspiration comes?

Molly -

People might think I’m crazy, but it just comes when it comes. Sometimes I am about to fall asleep, or I’m just waking up, and I’m like, “Damn, wait. This is a good thought.” The randomness of the universe really reveals itself in the chaos, there’s days where I wake up, and I know I’m gonna fucking create that night. I know my brain is on that plane today. I’m interpreting everything from the fifth dimension that entire day. I just feel something, and there’s emotions that don’t even reveal themselves in your imagination, I just need to fucking draw something, even if I don’t know. I don’t have an idea yet. Those are the pieces where I can discover some shit, or reveal something from my subconscious. So, to answer the question, it’s completely random, like, it happens often, it happens very often.

BanAnakin -

When it comes to inspiration, and let’s get into your past, you were a division 1 basketball player. I’ve known several people that played sports on that level and they had to dedicate a very large portion of their time, resources, and energy to train to be effective and gain that edge. Natural talent only gets you so far in the big time, you have to grow it.

Molly -

Yeah.

BanAnakin -

Do you find that your sports background translates to art? Did you bring anything with you into art?

Molly -

Whatever it was that drove me to be good at sports reveals itself in what I’m doing right now, especially the emotional things that happen, I went through a lot of really intense exciting moments where you’re just up on life, and then a lot of fucking hard, really low moments where I was either physically and mentally exhausted or injured.

I was somebody that always bounced back from injuries, but I never made it through an entire basketball season healthy. I had a minor ankle sprain my freshman year of high school, and then every season after that, including college, I didn’t start the season healthy or didn’t make it all the way through. So I also think about persistence. Even though I went through all that, I still bounced back. It’s a persistence thing that every artist really, truly needs to have a successful career or continue to create despite the price and demand. That’s how I think sports directly influenced me and probably will for the rest of my life.

BanAnakin -

What position did you play?

Molly -

I was a shooting guard. Well, when I was in high school I would do whatever between the 1 and 3 position and then, when I was in college, I was a 2 guard that did a little bit of everything. I could shoot, but I could facilitate well, I could assist really well. You’d never find me in the fucking post, but I can shoot. I’m trying to think…

BanAnakin -

Was basketball always your sport? People that are athletically gifted are usually good at more than one sport, and there comes a time where they have to pick one, just because of the huge time commitment.

Molly -

At some point in my life I played every major sport like soccer, softball, volleyball, track, everything… I think, probably out of all of those, the one that I enjoyed the most was track, because of the simplicity: you’re just running fast or you’re jumping really fucking high, or long, When I was in 7th and 8th grade, I got into track. I was high jumping and doing the 100, 200, 400. I really enjoyed it, but when it got time for high school, the thing was, track season is the exact same time as the basketball travel season and travel basketball season is the time, that for me particularly, I had to put my all into because that’s where I was getting exposure (being seen by the most scouts and decision makers).

And I mean, my high school basketball team was great, we always had a winning season, but I had to get out of that bubble because it was very small, no coaches were looking in that area. So I was just traveling all the time, and I just had to pick basketball. And honestly, I look back, and I’m like, Damn! I’m honestly kind of sad that I didn’t run track even though I know I couldn’t afford to.

BanAnakin -

Do you have a favorite basketball team, favorite basketball player?

Molly -

Oh, my! Gosh! Oh, yes, I don’t know if I can say I have a favorite team, because I definitely do. 2016 Cavaliers, because I was living in Ohio and watching Lebron, Kyrie, all those players! Something about the chemistry and the energy was nuts, and that was probably the most memorable year of watching 1 specific team play. And you know they were World Champs, and that was the first time Cleveland won. So that’s the only team I can truly say. I don’t usually cheer for a specific team just because of the college name. I’d cheer for certain coaches. I have a lot of respect for coach Dawn Staley and programs like Uconn and some of the guards that are on the come up right now. And NBA? One of my favorite NBA players of all time I would have to say, was Derek Rose…

BanAnakin -

He was something else before he got hurt.

Molly -

Yeah, before he really started getting injured. That was when I was younger and had the most time to actually watch people play: I got inspiration from watching Derek Rose, he was something else. Who else? Of course, Lebron. I’m a Bron fan in general, like I see what he’s done for the state of Ohio as well, and I just think he’s like a well-rounded GOAT, and just a fucking legend.

BanAnakin -

For the record, I will say I am a Golden State Warriors fan, so I don’t agree with your 2016 assessment, but it’s alright when it comes to Lebron. Definitely, I’ve had my times of hating on Lebron, I think a lot of people have. But in the end I really have a lot of respect for the way he has matured and navigated potential pitfalls, and how he has made shit happen. He makes so much look so easy.

Molly -

Dude. It’s really not easy in sports, and the media has been covering his every single fucking move. Since he was like 15 years old, like, Yeah, he’s gotta learn somehow. Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say; he started his own schooling system in Akron, Ohio. If you know the city of Akron, it’s really close to Cleveland, it’s not a great place, and every single student to graduate from his school gets their college paid for at Akron University. That’s an honorable cause to support.

BanAnakin -

And this is a perfect segue here, because I wanted to ask you; what is a movement or a cause that’s important to you. It could be like a charity, a cause, or awareness to a situation.

Molly -

Yeah, let me scope it out a little bit… well, I think of mindfulness and the education system. It’s not well-rounded, it doesn’t try. It just instills capitalism into people’s brains and then when you are spit out into the real world in 2023, everything reveals itself, and it’s like, “Oh, wow! I didn’t learn anything that I needed to succeed in life”, and then you just have to learn it on your own. Why don’t we teach people how to do their taxes in school? Why don’t we? Why don’t we talk more about mental health? And I also think that, probably stemming from my athletic career here, I think that even sports and athletics doesn’t really help that much, mainly because of the industrialization around them, it’s “big business”, in particular coming from my college experience.

Another thing that upsets me is diet is never really taught. It’s never really talked about. The things that really affect you the most are what you eat, what you consume- as in what you look at, listen to, watch, read. You can read a book or you can stare at the Internet all day. Physical activity, and not in a competitive sense, but in just the mindfulness of moving your body like it’s not approached in the right way. And then all these things I’m talking about become problems, they become a reality when it’s too late for almost everybody in the world, you know?

BanAnakin -

What is like a good piece of advice you’ve heard or received from someone else? Something that has stuck with you…

Molly -

Hmm! I have a clear and specific story for this. It’s an idea that a coach of mine told me during a game, when I was in 6th grade. It was so weird because it was an epiphany moment that has revealed itself time and time again. Even now, in art, in life. I had played the entire basketball game, it was a tough game and I was playing fucking hard. I remember I was burned the fuck out. I was tired and I looked over to my coach. I remember, maybe it was a timeout or maybe I was running by him, and I was like, I’m tired, I’m exhausted. My coach looked at me, and… now I remember that I relive this moment over and over again. He said it with so much confidence like he had experienced this before, and he knew. He looked at me, and he said,

“There’s always a second burst of energy.”

Whenever you like get to your breaking point and you’re tired as fuck, and you literally do not think you can keep going, that’s the moment when you can decide, fuck it. I’m just gonna keep going, even if I die like, even if I literally fall to the ground I’m just gonna keep going. To me it’s this mental hurdle. That’s when something really good happens. And I’m not gonna lie, that has revealed itself to me time and time and time again.

And another thing that I realize from that moment specifically in sports is that all of this shit is 90% mental. And it really, truly is. Even with my art, I got to points where I was literally like, what the hell am I doing with my life again? I’m joining people on Twitter spaces, and I’m making art throughout all hours of the night. Not sleeping, then I’m posting it online and having conversations in DM’s about it… like what am I doing? Sometimes I mentally leave that space behind and step into oblivion, and something unexpected, yet good happens. That state of mind has manifested itself in the coincidence that was my first sale, but specifically that moment in sixth grade.

BanAnakin -

Is there an artist, a group, a person, or a project that people should know about? Who would you like to shine a light on…

Molly -

Aaron and SuprSketch, because he is a real builder, creative entrepreneur. SuprSketch is innovation that can change the space and it’s more than just the person behind it. When it comes specifically to artists like, there’s so many, and I’m… I just wish they all could just pop off. I definitely wanna say Jason (@jpaksil) though, because of the amount of passion he talks about his work with and the final product, what it looks like. He gets really into it, physically and mentally and that’s something I can relate to and there are a lot of artists that are just working really fucking hard

Also. I truly think of Alyssa Stevens, because she’s so consistent and determined. She’s been around way longer than me and she has this very specific style, I feel it throughout all of her work. I’ve had a chance to speak to her in person before, she really impresses me. I get the feeling she’s truly in it for the art and philosophy behind it all. MAN, there’s so there’s so many artists that I love… those three people I just mentioned also happen to be some of the first friends I made in the space.

BanAnakin -

So we’re definitely, we’re at the end of our time now, but I want to thank you for being here, and I hope that you will come back again so we could talk about more things. We are leaving a lot of meat on the bone for next time! And remember how you said earlier that you hold a pencil in a weird way? Well, I’ve been here trying to imagine exactly how, and I decided that when you make art you hold it like a wand from the Harry Potter novels, I’m not exactly sure how that works, but it does in my mind. Is there anything else you’d like to share? Anything coming up.? Do you have any special secrets let us in on?

Molly -

Just an invitation; if you wanna talk about art in my dms, like, let’s fucking talk about it! Doesn’t matter whether it’s my art or yours. It is special when somebody reaches out to me and says “Hey, this makes me feel like this etc etc.” My DM’s are open for those reasons, that’s something I wanna share. Sweet, I appreciate this so much!

BanAnakin -

Thank you. See ya!

And thanks to you for reading. Find out more about Molly McCutcheon on her website or:

Twitter — @molly_mccutch

SuperRare — Molly McCutcheon

Instagram — molly_mccutch

“The Fine Print” is a collection of musings on art, culture, and technology. For articles on branding, marketing, and community check out 19% of success is showing up or Marketing Case Study — Women’s Razors

BanAnakin [Champ] brings real world experience to Web3 with branding, marketing, and community management. His work with 10k PFP and 1/1 art has contributed to $3,000,000 in sales volume.