Stained Glass Panels
three Mollie Meager figures tell their own private stories
These witty stained glass panels by Mollie Meager are typical of her spontaneous painterly style. Each of the stained glass paintings are only about 20cm (8in) square, but they are highly worked, using several different processes. Have a look at the blue one, particularly the left hand. Can you see the light catching the edges of each finger? That’s the result of glass etching – a wax resist has been painted on and the blue glass etched away with hydrofluoric acid, creating a textural quality that’s difficult to achieve any other way. Mollie lives in the middle of nowhere, and is (in)famous for the rickety table that she sets up outside for her glass etching. It’s hair-raising!
Mollie Meager nearly always uses glass etching and glass painting, and is a big fan of staining glass with silver nitrate. These techniques are evident in each of these stained glass panels. The silver nitrate – or silver stain – is applied freely on the diagonal, like the sun lighting up the face of each character. The figures themselves are at one with their surroundings – look at the decorative background merging with the pattern on the red woman’s dress for example. It is only the bold swathe of yellow silver stain that seems to stand out from the visual fabric of the image, suggesting that something 
from outside their lives is affecting them in some way.
And what about the stained glass painting? The black enamel is used to delineate form, to excentuate the patterning on the clothing and to suggest a shock of hair outside the frame. And of course the eyes… not one of the women is looking directly at us. They seem to be striking almost wistful poses; they could be sad, yearning, resigned. What’s certain is these intimate stained glass panels each tell a story that we can only guess at.
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