Two Sisters on a Healing Arts Mission

Discovering the Healing Mission of My Artistry

I've always felt my art was a partnership. Yet I always seemed to find myself alone in the studio. Talking to myself, listening to my dreams, wondering when and if my partner would ever appear. I'm not talking about my husband, I'm talking about a collaborator with whom I create. 

Long before I moved to my studio by the pond, dreamed of the meadow garden, a painting titled "Two Sisters" drove me on a quest. My vision of bare treetops against a fractured sky, with a vibrant meadow by the pond begged for an answer to the question, 'who is the sister?'

The first inkling came when Mom became ill. I helped Dad care for her, and on breaks, I painted in the garden of a friend's mother, who had died of cancer. I found comfort painting in her garden. And very slowly over time, opened my heart to hearing Mom through the veil.

I never forgot Two Sisters because it was juried into The Pastel Society of America International exhibition in New York City's National Arts Club. I flew to NYC to attend the opening in the fall of 1979. The painting was purchased for the City University of New York's permanent collection, and I was the first Virginian accepted as a PSA member. Two Sisters stood stately reverberating her question. 

Dorothy wearing hand painted Two Sisters silk scarf

After Mom passed, she reappeared; in textile paintings on silk, mixed media oil pastel on paper, textile collage on canvas. With each iteration, journal entry, sketch, painting, the questions multiplied. Who is the sister? Why is it called two sisters? Where did that title come from? Why is THIS still present?

 Two Sisters Waking Dream textile collage

All the while, I could feel Mom more deeply in the studio; as I sewed on her 1965 Phaff machine, she seemed to  permeate every fiber of my being. I felt her in the garden, showing me what to plant where, when to prune, fertilize, harvest.

In life she'd championed my artistry, taking me to painting and sculpture classes, music lessons, teaching me to sew, knit, and crochet, design draperies, and garden. And she's with me still.

Pauline Fagan in her garden 

Pauline Fagan was committed to wellness. She read avidly about prevention, patterning, and when she was diagnosed with brain cancer, she fought hard to reclaim the life she was not finished living. Ten years after her passing, my sisters and I discovered she had been visiting each of us.

In dreams, feelings, ghostly visions, we felt her presence. My sister helped her cross into the Light. She's at peace now. And her legacy of healing arts lives through Dorothy Fagan New Earth Healing Arts.