A Life of Color Healing Art
Dorothy Fagan knew she would be an artist in the second grade, when the nuns encouraged her to copy a picture of the Virgin Mary on the chalkboard at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Boonton, New Jersey. Her Aunt Agnes gave her a set of her own artist's pastels for her twelfth birthday.
A Freshman art student at East Carolina University, she found the courage to use them. She had no idea, however, that he triptych pastel landscape in which she'd painted a woman's reclining body, was a mirror of her own.
With her B.F.A. in Printmaking and Painting, she went on to complete a ten-year American Masters Painting Mentorship with Robert Bowers Mayo, Valentine Museum and Gallery Mayo.
A young mother, she won international recognition at the Pastel Society of America, & Pastel Society of Canada, exhibiting her work at the Copley Society in Boston, and the National Arts Club in New York City, the Virginia Museum, the Hermitage Museum, and the Virginia Contemporary Museum of Art.
Assaulted in her studio at knife-point, engaged her in digging the woman out from under the mountain of trauma. PTSD wasn't a thing back then. She couldn't paint the beautiful landscapes she'd painted the day before. Dorothy was on her own in trying to find the artist she thought she lost.
Deep, complex emotions screamed their way into alternating colors. Balancing them on canvas, she created a visceral kind of peace that mirrored in her body, however fleeting.
Raising three children and caring for her mother through a battle with cancer, Dorothy sought refuge mixing strokes of color with silent prayers for peace.
She aligned colors like a puppy synching its heartbeat with its mother ~ drawing her colors from Mother Earth's healing energy ~ as she painted plein air in gardens, and along the coastal landscape of her home.
In her Color Fusion Process, Dorothy scans her palette for a WOW! color. Then asks the Creator where to place it on the canvas. Juxtaposing emotional colors, she steps across the room to mix them in her mind's eye. She is often surprised at what she sees and feels.
Colors of the Light ~ Rainbow colors corresponding to chakra energy centers along the spine automatically engage heart, soul, mind, and body to release a mountain of trauma.
Across the room, a sigh, a tear. A river of tears dissolves the mountain. Drop by drop, without words ~ the mountain disappears silently as emotional energy is transformed into healing Light energy, the kind a human craves to enlighten each day.
Dorothy's Dream painting began with a 'feeling of pink.' Releasing a subtle emotion opened a portal. The painting became a diptych, as she pulled a second easel up beside the first. Companion paintings provide a place for ebb and flow to move, an important aspect of the creative healing process.
And so a goddess of light appeared on the second canvas, lifting up a grey woman in the shadows of the first.
When Dorothy received the invitation from Italian curator Erika Gravante quoting Oscar Wilde, "one should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art!" ~ Dorothy saw her Dream Painting in Milan Fashion Week 2020 DressME exhibition at MADS Gallery.
Dorothy specializes in large paintings to wrap clients with colors of the heart and soul. Many of her works are diptychs, triptychs, and quad paintings ~ designed to wrap the room with colors, moving healing creative energies throughout the space.
In her commissioned paintings, Dorothy opens her creative bubble to include her clients. From incubation to installation, home owners experience their own creative journey along with Dorothy.