Works of Art • Michael Molloy  

Michael Molloy studied painting before beginning a career in newspapers. He was editor of the Daily Mirror for the ten years before Robert Maxwell bought the company when he became Editor in Chief of Mirror Group Newspapers. He left to become a full time writer and published several acclaimed novels and children’s books, but then, ten years ago, he compulsively began to paint again. He has exhibited in the South of France and London. Collectors of his work include Anne Robinson, Delia Smith and Lesley Joseph.

Molloy says of his art;  "I think my work is quintessentially English and mostly drawn from the suburbs of London and the outlying villages and countryside. As a child in West London I often saw shots of familiar streets in the movies made by Ealing Studios, which also helped to blur the barriers between reality and creativity in my imagination. In my mind today there is often a dreamlike merging of old family photographs, black and white film stills, and childhood recollections that all contribute and influence my pictures. I am deeply attracted to the period my family lived through in the 30’s 40’s and fifties. A condition that I believe is sometimes referred to as ‘Post generation nostalgia.’ It is a world that is all but gone from our cities and suburbs, apart from the parks and some of the older houses, but it can still be found more abundantly in the unchanging English countryside."

Review of The Finest Hours (September 2010):

I just wanted to write and say how much I enjoyed the Private View for the Michael Molloy exhibition this evening.  The first thing I did when I arrived home from the show was to put on music from the '30s and '40s, though I think the ultimate sound- track of that time would be Glenn Miller, the Andrews Sisters and the wonderful Gracie Fields, but of course there were countless others.  I was asked by a member of your gallery staff if I had a particular favourite painting, but in all honesty I can't say that I did; they all evoked a different emotional response in me.   DECEMBER IN MOONLIGHT; well, in my ignorance I didn't know if it was a Lancaster or Wellington bomber but it certainly plucked a few heart-strings!  My father was an engineer in the RAF, stationed at Brooklands in Surrey where these magnificent machines were built, before being posted off to Egypt or Italy.  Every painting in the show told a story, not necessarily of heroic deeds but of the men and women 'down the street' just coping and getting on with it all.  One picture I kept returning to was LECTURE AT THE WOMEN'S INSTITUTE which made me chuckle each time I looked at it.  The poor woman on the left of the picture didn't seem to have realized what she'd let herself in for!  THE SHORTAGE OF DANCING PARTNERS was poignant in as much as it illustrated the absence of the men who'd gone off to fight, perhaps never to return.  It was a magical exhibition conjuring up an age I was born too late to have experienced, but I suffer gladly the condition that Mr Molloy describes as 'post generation nostalgia'!  SILK STOCKINGS FOR SALE; well, I suppose it was common knowledge that GIs used nylon stockings as 'girl bait' & I believe a lot of young English roses would shave their legs and have a friend draw a straight(ish) line down the back of their legs to make it look like a stocking seam!  The extent girls will....Due to post-war austerity fashion didn't really change that much until the mid-fifties with Dior (if you could afford it), so working-class women still wore their cotton-print dresses from the war years, and perhaps whizzed them under the old 'Singer' to bring them up to date.  Men were still wearing their awful 'demob' suits; at that time the only fashion accessory men would allow themselves was a dab of 'Brylcreme'- 'A little dab'll do ya!'  It wasn't until the late '60s that a man could actually wear a pink shirt without being branded as something almost 'unthinkable'!