Visual arts: Painter responds to mother's battle with Alzheimer's disease with art

Toward the end of the life of her mother, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Susanne Dotson began painting scenes of flowers, especially the roses her mother loved.

The Columbus artist, who began the homage to her mother at the beginning of 2020, said the acrylic paintings “just started pouring out of me.” On Dec. 20, at the age of 96, Harriet Keller Wise — also a painter — died in her home in LaGrange, Ohio, in the northeastern part of the state.

Dotson’s colorful floral series is presented in the Short North’s Sarah Gormley Gallery. The exhibit, which also can be seen on the gallery website, is titled “Can You Tell Me Who I Am,” one of the questions Dotson’s mother would ask in her final years.  

The paintings are vivid with contrasting summer colors. “Morning Roses” presents light-yellow blooms against a deep-aqua background. “He Always Gave Her Red” showcases the red roses that Dotson’s father frequently bought for his wife.

The large “Weeping Roses,” one of the paintings that Harriet Keller Wise saw before she died, masses pale-pink roses on an aqua background. As in many of these paintings, the flowers drip what looks like tears from their petals or stems.

“My mother loved roses, and she loved pink. She always dressed me in pink and,” Dotson said, laughing, “I hate pink … She thought this painting was beautiful.”

As a young college student, Dotson, now 76, studied art at the University of Akron, then went on to a career in business as an interior designer and manufacturing representative. But throughout those years, she made time to paint. Central Ohioans might know her for her “farm and fashion” works, especially whimsical portraits of chickens, some wearing costume jewelry.

In 2017, Dotson sold her business and began to attend graduate school in fine art at the Columbus College of Art & Design, earning her master’s degree in 2019.

“I was the oldest person there. Even the janitors were younger,” she said.

Since then, she’s been painting full time.

Gallery owner Sarah Gormley visited Dotson’s studio where she discovered Dotson’s floral tributes to her mother. “My rule for my gallery is that I have to love the works in order to have them in a show,” she said. Dotson’s works passed her test.

The paintings in “Can You Tell Me Who I Am” are not sorrowful as one might expect given the catalyst of Alzheimer’s; rather, they are bold and largely joyful. In some of the paintings, such as “Scrambled Thoughts,” Dotson has subtly incorporated questions her mother would ask: “What is your name?” “How long have you lived here?”

“The Last Flamingo” recalls two dozen of her mother’s friends who socialized together as young women in LaGrange and called themselves “The Flamingos.” Dotson said her mother, most likely, was the last one.

The artist is not sure if she will continue this series, although she said, “I still have two (paintings) on easels.”

What she does know is that the works were made from love.

“I’m both grieving and celebrating my mother,” she said.

negilson@gmail.com

At a glance

“Can You Tell Me Who I Am,” paintings by Susanne Dotson, continues through Jan. 31 at the Sarah Gormley Gallery, 988 N. High St. Hours: By appointment. Visit www.sarahgormleygallery.com.