Artist Kwue Molly uses his music and mural art to inspire others on his North Shore streets

by JENNIFER VIKSE

While you may not know the name Kwue Molly, odds are you have seen his work.

The artist, who hails from Port Richmond, is well known for his murals on brick walls along the North Shore and the powerful messaging that comes with them.

But that’s not all. While Molly taught himself how to be expressive through drawing and painting from the time he was a small child, he also finds expression as a musician, and over the past two decades has been involved in numerous projects, both commercial and in the underground scene. He has worked with
Ghostface Killah of the Wu Tang Clan and has also participated in music festivals around the country. Most recently, he painted live at the Governors Island sixth Annual Beach Party with G Unit and 50 Cent.

“I’ve been around art since I was in diapers,” he said from his studio in Port Richmond, adding that early training was exposure to the streets of New York City. “My mom would drive me in the VW through the city and I would tell her, ‘I wanna see the colors on the walls.’” His early influences were graffiti artists Syre, Caster, and Gano.

While he concentrated on his music through much of the ’80s and ’90s, four years ago he was approached about participating in an art show. The rest, as they say, is history. Music and his love for it is never forgotten, however, and it even informs his other endeavors. “My inspi-ration is through my love for music and how it moves the soul, so I compose that on my canvas,” he explained.

Molly has painted numerous community murals with various themes for different sponsors, helping to uplift neighborhoods. He’s also worked collaboratively to create some of Staten Island’s most notable outdoor murals, including the Pillz Killz wall.

“Being from Port Richmond, I love to give back in the way I am capable. My message is simple: be one with my art through positivity, awareness, and leave a mark in the community,” he noted. One work, “Colorblind,” he explained, is “a mural with over 20 flags collaged together to show equality and to embrace [each other] no matter what your race is. It’s a Cumbia-Latin-inspired piece [Cumbia is a dance-oriented
music genre popular throughout Latin America] to show joy and happiness and dancing in the streets.”

“Santa Rosa” is a piece honoring the first person born in the Americas to be canonized by the Catholic Church, while “Summertime Fun” symbolizes just that…and enjoying Port Richmond during the summer days.

While Molly is generous with his time and talent, there are challenges to the artistic process. One is quieting his mind long enough to get the details out.

“The challenge is to keep up with my endless racing mind and be able to get [work] out for people to see and understand,” he said with a laugh, adding that there is nothing in the world quite like “…loud music in my ears, 20 cans of paint, and an extra large wall. That’s the joy of an artist to me.”

He also confessed that working in his home neighborhood of Port Richmond is a blessing. “I feel in debt, and I have a connection to the walls,” he said. “It was the first spot [where] I did a public mural in 1991…in the beginning.”

Kwue Molly
kwuemolly.com