Mollie Flannery

For me, being a painter means slowing down. It means reveling in the sensuality of paint, the thick
smell of oil and turpentine. It means pausing to really see. As a teacher, I strive to help people unlock
this capacity to slow down and see deeply.
I received my MA in art education from NYU and my BA in Studio Art from Vassar College. For
five years, I taught art to middle schoolers at Greenwich Academy, an all-girls school in Greenwich,
CT. For the next two years, I taught painting, drawing, and sculpture to high schoolers at Millbrook
School, a boarding school in Dutchess County, NY. I also directed the school’s Warner gallery,
recruiting artists and curating shows several times per year. I currently stay home to raise my two
young children. Three times a week, I teach a mindfulness-based art curriculum to students in
special education classrooms in Albany and Schenectady public schools.
One of my favorite assignments to give high school students is to make a painting of a collage. In
building the collage out of found papers and magazine clippings, students experiment with
juxtaposing images and ideas. As a class, we are delighted by the happy accidents, the magical
pairings of color and form that can happen with collage. One of my students cuts a serene black and
white photograph of children playing on a craggy beach into the shape of a woman’s profile. We
notice how this recognizable silhouette becomes a window onto this other world, and the young
artist takes pride in making meaning and evoking memories. The next step is my favorite part. In
translating their collages into paintings, my students face technical challenges. They learn how to
build form, how to sculpt with paint. The final pieces balance conceptual depth with technical rigor.
The process asks my students to construct an imagined world and then to slow down, to see deeply,
and to figure out how to make this world visible to the outside.
Art is a respite from the chaos of the world. It is also a channel through which we can articulate the
chaos of the world. It is my goal as an art teacher to help my students to experience this respite and
also to express this confusion. To revel in the wonder of it all, and to question it, as well.