Dorothy Jenson is my mother. She was a life-long artist. As a child she would get scolded from her elementary teachers for doodling and drawing cartoons in class. As she grew, so too did the quality of her doodles. As a young mother, she shifted her talents and mediums depending on her budget and the needs of her family. Dorothy was an avid reader and learner, and taught herself many new skills with the help of her beloved local library.
Over the years, she dabbled in paper folding, making elaborate flowers to give as gifts and brighten her home. She taught herself to sew and made beautiful clothes and quilts for family and friends. Her spring flower beds were a brilliant mosaic of color after a winter spent planning and plotting with seed catalogs. Dorothy used color pencils or watercolors to make family portraits to decorate the walls. For a few years she spent hours walking along riverbanks looking for the perfect shaped rocks to paint a menagerie of life-like animals. She always found a way to create something beautiful with whatever she could find.
In her 50s, Dorothy moved to more traditional artistic pursuits. She picked up pastels and acrylic paints and started painting the world around her onto canvas. She would use a variety of reference photos from her travels around the country, as well as dabble in whatever crazy images came to her head.
When Dorothy started her art blog and offered to sell her art, she was surprised at the welcome reception she received. Other artists asked for advice and set up workshops with her. She travelled around Oregon and sold her pieces at art fairs. She would marvel when perfect strangers would love and buy her work.
Dorothy was 61 when the end of her life came in a very rare form of cancer. She stayed a creator all the way to the end by letting the wildflowers grow up around her house, holding last art workshops with her grandchildren, and dying her hair blue.
I am pleased to make some of my favorite pieces of Dorothy's art available in multiple formats, such as tote bags, notebooks, throw pillows, and more here:
***Is the book available somewhere? Should we keep this last paragraph and link to where the book can be purchased? What about prints? Those can be sold through Threadless, is there somewhere else those are currently available?***
This book documents Dorothy’s artistic journey as detailed in the blog she kept from _____ to _____. The entries showcase her signature warm and friendly writing style, her periods of experimentation, and of course many of her beautiful paintings and drawings. Dorothy’s hope was that her blog (and therefore this book) would inspire others to pick up a brush, a pencil, a pastel, or even a rock and start creating!