Never a dull moment in the artist/mother’s life of art and curiosity, Dorothy’s summers began in Nederland in 1923 and have been cherished by every sun stroked day since.
Every year, Dorothy’s family would leave the hot Kansas sun and head for the cool summer breezes of the mountains they loved so much. Their model T took two days to get to Boulder from Wichita, and then a full day to get up the canyon, stopping at the falls to refill the radiator and have a picnic lunch. They’d spend the whole summer roaming the Ned valley, riding horses, taking expeditions with her four siblings and Parents up to the Glaciers that are mostly gone now.
Dorothy always loved the stories of the Pioneer Women that helped settle the west, exploring the Rockies from Taos to the Indian Peaks to Montana’s Glacier Park, imagining herself living in those days.
There were tougher women out there maybe, but none more determined to live her life to the fullest, beating three different kinds of cancer and heart disease later in life.
Coming of age and graduating high school in 1941 in Wichita Kansas as the country was going to war, many of Dorothy’s best friends left for the Pacific Theater against the Japanese. She spent three years in Wichita State College, and then with great pride went to work for Braniff Airways in 1944, helping to support the war effort.
TRUE PASSION COMES ALIVE
As the war wound down, and the boys came home, Dorothy began to think about what she really wanted to do with her life. She’d really always known it was fine art and illustration, but life during wartime had not been conducive to ‘non-essential’ pursuits.
Now was her time: she enrolled in Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1946, studying Fashion Illustration, and in her second year began professionally working as a freelance fashion illustrator until 1949. Deciding to get back to her roots in the Midwest, Dorothy applied to Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, where she attended until 1951, when she again broke out and freelanced in professional illustration.
THE NESTING INSTINCT
In 1953, on the day before her 30th birthday, Dorothy married the man of her dreams, Marbury Hill Brown, a promising young illustrator from California whom she had met in Kansas City at the Art Institute. The first of her six children was born exactly a year later, on Dorothy and Marbury’s first anniversary in Wichita, Kansas.
Their star began to rise as they followed Marbury’s rocketing career to Houston where he went to work illustrating for Niemann-Marcus, then on to Dallas, and from there straight to New York City in 1960, with four babies in tow by then.
Two more were children born in New York, where they lived on Staten Island while Marbury rode the ferry into Manhattan each day and Dorothy raised a household of kids. No effort was spared exposing the children to what Manhattan offered: museums, plays, galleries and any form of metropolitan culture and art the city had to offer.
As empty-nesters, Dorothy and Marbury finally returned full time to the mountains of Colorado in 1988, ready to paint and relax in the high mountain air. They rented a studio from the wonderful Kay Horowitz’s Magnolia Pottery and Dorothy began her hand made/hand painted tile business, outfitting beautiful kitchens with colorful, hand designed custom tiles. Dorothy was inspired by her mountains and sun, wind and snow, on fire with ideas for paintings and tiles. Unfortunately, Marbury slipped into depression and passed away at 72 in 1997, leaving Dorothy to pick up the pieces of a dream they had shared.
Pick up the pieces she did, never one to let anything slow her determination for long. Sculpting, painting, making tiles, each day in the sunny Rocky Mountains was a new inspiration for her.
Miner’s Day was her favorite holiday weekend, taking her back through a life surrounded by a history of old time hard rock mining, and Dorothy could not have been more moved than when she was chosen to be the Grand Marshall of the Miner’s Day Parade one year.
Always a quick wit, Miss Dorothy (she loved the southern elegance) stayed sharp up to her last minutes on Earth, reading anything and everything she could get her hands on, and usually sending articles off to whoever’s heart they would most touch. She was 90 years old when recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado. Her response was typically to-the-point: “I don’t smoke marijuana, but at least now I can get a seat at the doctor’s office!”
Dorothy is survived by her six children, Marbury Christopher, Peter, Leslie, Alan, Tim and Kathleen, and seven grandchildren, Jeffrey, Zoe, Zach, Ethan, Conrad, Lucas and Kobe. Memorial Service will be held at St Rita’s at 1:00 pm August 19, 2017.
