THE STORY

These paintings have been held in my studio. Tended. Waiting.

I have imagined them in a museum — held in a climate-controlled room, catalogued and preserved, technically safe. But as I sat with that image — the paintings that have healed me, sealed away where no one could feel them in everyday life as I have, feel their warmth, taste their colours, reflect and talk back to them as I have for all these years — I knew I had to find another way.

These works of heart were made to be out in the world, doing their work. Teaching hearts to feel. To heal themselves as they were always meant to do. To reestablish the healing interchange of energy with earth, sky and water that heals humans — and the beautiful earth we inhabit.

In the home of a woman who stops in front of one every morning on her way to the kitchen and feels, for just a moment, the particular quiet of standing beside water at first light. In the room where life is actually lived — where the painting catches the afternoon light and does something gentle and essential to the person passing by. Where it teaches, day by day, in the way that only beauty can teach:

To feel the earth is to embody its healing flow.

That is what a museum back room cannot offer.

That is what you can.

THE INVITATION

This is the Watershed Release.

Beginning now, and unfolding over the coming weeks, original paintings from fifty years of following the Chesapeake Bay Watershed — from the Appalachian highlands where the water begins, to the tidal marshes and open waters where it arrives — are finding their permanent homes.

Each work is offered with its story. What inspired it. What it felt like to stand in that place and let the healing colours move through the body. One precious moment, painting by painting.

And for some paintings — a series of precious moments. Pivot points where the energy shifted and asked me to follow. A switchback healing process, alternating light and shadow, moving into a harmony I could never have imagined at the beginning. These are the works that taught me the most. They may be the ones that teach you too.

If one of these paintings is yours — I believe you will know it when you see it.

THE PAINTINGS

— Updated weekly as new works are released —

New works arrive each week throughout the Watershed Release. To be notified when new paintings are released — and to receive first access before works are shared publicly — enter your name and email and receive a letter from Dorothy with the story behind the work.