Dorothy Fagan's Artist Story — The 50-Year Arc of a Healing Art Journey

The Healing Power of the Heart

Stepping back, I see the evolution of my healing heart over five decades in my paintings and the journaled titles that came with them. Cryptic instructions from the creative heart, dropped like breadcrumbs, to guide me home whenever I was brave enough to find their meaning. 

Tango in the Heartland

In the early days, painting titles stood alone as questions without answers. My urgency to seek magnified with the attack on my life and my mother's passing. A friend suggested I journal a conversation between the two sides of myself that seemed to always be at opposite sides.  Will and Faith emerged to negotiate peace.

I discovered symbols in the paintings. In parallel with stories in the journal, art became a kind of dynamic moving picture of the spiritual play going on in my heart. New questions arose. 'If I paint out the dark cloud, will that dark cloud move out of my life?' And I found myself a  co-creative daily immersed in my endeavor.

You can feel the colorful emotions in the avalanche of deep, undulating waves throughout my paintings. These flushed away tear-like arrays, past life relics, and abandoned cottages -- revealing The Land of Plenty.

As my mark-making coalesced in journals and on canvases, my Land of Plenty series emerged, and my Splash Scribble™ method evolved. From my very personal expression to visionary art, and now into a healing art collection with mini-lessons to guide others in doing the same. 

Land of Plenty (1978–2026)

Tango in the Heartland says it all. From my earliest days as an artist, I felt driven to paint the undulating hills and valleys close to home in Virginia and New Jersey.  Pieces titled 'Mist in My Heart' and 'Resting Place'  spoke of something deeper beneath the Appalchian Mountains I painted. Tiny cottages perched on faraway hillsides, glinted in the light, and urged me to keep going.

 After the life-threatening assault, I pivoted in search of a new reality. Painting en plein air, I discovered the landscape 'out there' no longer mirrors the landscape within. 

PIvoting again, the landscape within came to life, as tiny cottages moved into the foreground, alongside a pond with three sentinel trees, revealing my past life as a domentic slave from Tennessee named Patsy Mae who had not quite been laid to rest. 

Her story spilled out in paintings and brought me the peace I felt so driven to find. Now she rests in peace by the pond. She's no longer a patsy, rather the author of her own creative heart.

Beyond Dreams

Sunrise Sunset (1983–2026)

After four fallow years following the assault, we moved to the coastal village of Cobbs Creek. My ability to paint was rusty from non-use. Yet the woodlands felt like my New Jersey home and called with fresh air, restorative color, and precious quiet.

I planted my easel in the dunes of Bethel Beach Sanctuary and matched my colors to earth and sky. I painted earth sky and water from my lowlands vantage point, on the narrow strip of sand between inland creeks and the Chesapeake Bay. 

Painting the daily rhythmn of the light, sunrise sunset restored clarity and purpose. Though this forty year practice, I embody the flow of the watershed beneath my feet. I paint with the confluence of fresh and salt water, the brackish pond beside my studio. 

Sunrise Sunset series spans over forty years, hundreds of paintings. Shop more Sunrise Sunset, or meet with Dorothy to dive deeper into this vast collection and discover your favorites.

Flourishing in the Meadow

Flourish (1985–2026)

I first painted in the garden of a friend while Mom was ill. Grieving, I found painting dappled sunlight on rows of azalea, iris, and lilies deeply healing. 

I didn't understand at first. After Mom passed, I began feeling her coming through my art, in vivid dreams, my textiles, in my garden, in my bones. I felt her answering the one question I'd carried with my art for decades, 'who is the sister?'

The pastel painting titled, Two Sisters (1978), with the fractured tree tops and vibrant meadow by the pond resurfaced repeatedly. A story in itself, the gardener guides me in my artistry, in planting, in cultivating, and caring.

The Flourish series took flight when I returned from France. Shop more Flourish floral abstracts, or meet with Dorothy to dive deeper into this vast collection and discover your favorites.