"NOTHING GOOD EVER CAME FROM THIS TOWN"

Liza Molnár and Braxton Haugen In Conversation

words maisie jane daniels

I’ve known Liza Molnár for seven years. We first met on a modelling job - Liza was vegan at the time, and the only thing on the menu was pizza. I watched her politely say, “That’s okay,” and not eat. I jumped in and told them they needed to get her something she could actually eat. From there, a friendship formed - and it’s been beautiful watching us grow from being Just Kids (if you know, you know), over seven years of life, chaos, and connection.

We bonded over a mutual love of Bob Dylan, book lends, me being the guinea pig for her first-ever tattoo, and her advising me not to get “Lust For Life” tattooed on my body (apparently it’s cringe?!). We cried and vented over terrible boyfriends, survived a global pandemic (which saw us get into a whole situation with a man and his dog - we won’t go there), and tried to turn our passions into careers in London. Eventually, Liza left to meet Braxton Haugen, a pen pal turned partner. The two hit it off instantly, and now split their time between London, America, and Europe - carving out space for creativity, connection, and each other.

Fast forward to now - we’re in our thirties, doing what we love, in secure relationships, and with no questionable quote tattoos. It’s a beautiful thing to reflect on how far we’ve come. Liza, now an exhibiting Hungarian artist, unveils her latest body of work in Held Together, a duo show at ST.ART GALLERY in Fitzrovia. Braxton, an American filmmaker, is creating The World of Braxton Haugen, a series of intimate short films for Instagram.

From the quiet of their London flat, they reflect on love, leaving, and coming back again. As F Word becomes a fly on the wall, the two share thoughts on art, memory, and making things that matter. We talk about Braxton’s first experience of London, the heart behind Liza’s new collection, and why Braxton is returning to short-form video after more traditional films - it’s a bit like when Dylan went electric. And finally, we ask the big question: is it true that nothing good ever came from this town? (Again, if you know, you know.)

BH: Alright, we're rolling. I guess we can talk about what we’ve been up to for the last few months. It’s been a pretty exciting year.

LM: Yes! We had a lot of ups and downs. How do you feel about saying goodbye to this city?

BH: I feel like our time in London is always coming to an end. It’s just the nature of coming and going all the time. There’s the initial sense of arrival which is really wonderful, but it’s a fading thing. You end up living with that departure date kind of hanging over you, don’t you?

LM: It really does. This was your third time in London. How was it compared to the others?

BH: Our world has really started to open up this time. We’re just a lot further into our own things now. I’ve been able to actually make and release movies here. I couldn’t really say that the first two times around. I mean I was always working, but the films were few and far between. Things had a way of getting away from me here.

This has also been the most successful and satisfied you’ve been with your work too. During my first time here, our lives kind of centered around your school. I’d sneak into the library at the Chelsea to write and edit while you were in class. I have a nice memory of that time. The second time around, things kind of go dark for me. That wasn’t a happy time. All I can remember is how restless I felt.

LM: You’ve always been restless ever since I met you. Even this time, you spent the first two months here changing our surroundings. I guess every time you come back, you have an impulse to change everything around us. Just building and painting around the flat.

BH: Well, life is a work in progress. I was also recovering from the tear in my knee the first couple of months here. I needed to do something to keep my hands busy around the place, or I really would have lost it.

But that didn’t stop you from putting me to work in your studio. That was really the highlight of this time for me. I loved coming to work with you in the studio. That was a big change for us.

How do you feel about the space now? Did having your own studio change the way you felt about the city in any way? This is the first studio space you’ve ever had dedicated just to your own work.

LM: It’s nice to have a space where I could make a mess for the first time and put things around me that inspire me or make me happy. In a way, it’s like a second home.

And finally, I was able to work on bigger paintings. And paint multiple ones next to each other, and I can just come from one and work on the other if I feel stuck at any moment.

BH: Do you think about the paintings when you’re away from the studio or is there a sense of going to a job that you clock in at, do your work and then leave it there when you go?

LM: I am not sure if I live with the paintings after I leave the studio, but I definitely live with the idea of them before I start. And when I get to a stage with a painting where I feel like this is it, a kind of click where things fall into place then, yes, it’s exciting. But I remember being at a stage where I just didn’t know what I was doing, and it felt more like a dread I had to push through.

BH: Is there any painting from this new collection that you’re showing which you feel closer to than the others?

LM: I really like Lodestar. It was one of the first ones I started to work on in this group of paintings. This series of work builds on the structure of the hero’s journey. The Hero’s Journey is this concept by Joseph Campbell, where someone leaves their familiar world, goes through all sorts of challenges, and comes back changed.

Lodestar marks the beginning of that journey where it feels like the possibilities are just endless. You can go in any direction and discover something new. Even coming back to London again and again and writing a new story starting with a clean slate.

But then again, I really like Stormy Sea too, which I painted in Los Angeles when we stayed there last summer. I painted it outside, and I always say the sun marked the picture. You just told me earlier today about this interview you were rewatching where David Lynch said he leaves his paintings out in the sun because he likes the effect so much.

BH: Yeah, and you substituted the California sun with an open flame blowtorch in London.

LM: But it’s difficult to get that natural crackling effect without the sun. Maybe a heat gun would be better because it is less intense heat. An artist friend of mine who used to be a house painter said you get that effect when the paint dries too fast. He also said a bad house painting job makes a good painting. I thought that was funny.

BH: How do you think using The Hero’s Journey as a framing device helped you see the entire body of work? You came up with that idea relatively late in the process. By then you’d already had eight paintings done, right?

LM: You and our friend Rachel had recommended the book a while ago, but a whole series of events kind of led me to read it. When I was reading it, I couldn’t believe how much my paintings fit into the book. They matched every different stage. I had already painted Star Gazing by then, which I think is a perfect painting to show the stage of the beginning of the journey, where you might be just starting out full of curiosity.

BH: It’s the universal storytelling structure.

LM: Yes! And we all have our unique journeys. We often go on these long walks or pilgrimages to visit different places. And what we find on our way really compels me to make something or to commemorate the feeling or experience in some way.

In LA we visited the whale mural Agnès Varda filmed in MurMurs and it ended up being in the main inspiration of Imagination. But sometimes you run into things coincidentally and see certain shapes or find things that spark that in you. It makes life sort of playful to be attuned to what is around us. 

Do you have any places that are like that for you in London?

Braxton: The one that immediately comes to mind is The Savoy. Standing in the alley where Dylan, Ginsberg, and Neuwirth stood to make what we know now as the Subterranean Homesick Blues music video was incredible. The air was different there. I can’t really explain it. We took these photographs on the Rolleiflex that day too. Whatever the feeling was that we had there, those pictures captured it. It almost feels a little inappropriate to talk about it, like I am letting out some kind of secret or something. I guess all I can say is that it was this really beautiful experience.

William Blake's grave also felt like a pilgrimage in some way. You even based an entire series of paintings off of the deterioration of the headstone. That was pretty cool.

LM: I did. You mention Blake’s grave in your new series of videos. Why did you decide to make short stuff again after working on more traditional films?

BH: Well, I felt like I finally had something to say with this medium again. I’d spent nine months working on a feature film that just ended up sitting on a hard drive. My head was in a very different place then. I just wasn’t thinking in terms of short videos I was trying to go the distance. So this is a very different way of working. What I’m doing now is a lot closer to what I was doing when I was 17, 18 years old. Not in a retracing my footsteps kind of way, more so in a fulfillment of that kid’s dreams kind of way.

LM: How do you feel about this way of working? The pace?

BH: It’s like coming out a kind of amnesia. It’s intense, but I feel at home in the chaos of making a movie every week. Like I said, this all feels a lot closer to how I was living seven or eight years ago.

The Beatles had a new single out every three months and a new record every six. That’s the goal now. My priorities and ambitions have really shifted around. I feel like the feature film is sitting on the shelf for me now.

I like that with this way of working there is something to show for by the end of the week. And if there's something in there I didn't get right, I’m already onto the next one and can put that lesson into practice right away. The pace itself is a teacher.

LM: Why do you think that this is a suitable form for your work now? What changed with you wanting to hold onto things until you think they’re perfect?

BH: Well, I think that’s pretty much a recipe for an unlived life. That sort of perfectionism in me was more a form of cowardice than anything else. It's really easy to spend the entire day sculpting something in private, convincing yourself that you're making it perfect before you show it to anyone - and never showing it - and just having a "fuck it" attitude and saying, no, the work is ready. I believe in it, I made it, and I mean it. And here it is. Think whatever you want about it. That's what I'm doing now. Post and ghost.

LM: But what about the anxiety of not getting to the heart of something?

BH: I’m a writer, so I guess that anxiety is always there in one way or another. But I really don't know how much I've been tripped up with that for these first few parts of World. I think that the scripts always feel a little thin and underwritten to me. It's not until the visuals are there that I can see the integrity of the story. That's a big departure from what I have done in the last couple of years, where I felt like the script is the most interesting part of my filmmaking. There's the fear of only scratching the surface of an idea because of the limited runtime of these, but there's also a kind of power and intrigue with it too. I'm still figuring it out.

LM: You’re leaving London soon, by the time this interview comes out, you would have left and will be continuing your series in America. Do you think if you had more time here, you would’ve made more? Any last thoughts before you get on a plane?

BH: I would have loved to make a few more parts here. But there will be time for that down the road I'm sure. It's a shame I have to go just when things are starting to get really exciting here, but that's life. The great thing about these new movies is that I can more or less make them from wherever I am in the world. This will be a new kind of freedom for us. But I will definitely miss London. Maybe it has grown on me after all. I think it can be a beautiful city. But it’s like any other big city in that it has a kind of mirror effect on you. I think you see what you want to see in this place or you can’t stand to look at what’s there. I’ve felt both sides of that. But it doesn't really make a difference to me. I am here because of you. It could have been any place and I would have come. Budapest or Sonora. I would have followed you to the end of the world.

Liza’s painting are exhibited at ST.ART GALLERY until the end of August, which is open by appointment: contact@startgallery.co.uk

Braxton publishes new parts of his series every Friday on his Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/braxtonhaugen/