Surrounded by prayer flags, flowers, candles and her daughters, watercolor artist GlenDora “Dodie” Hamilton-Brandon passed peacefully from natural causes on July 6, 2020 at the home of her daughter, Lea Nagy, in Arcata. She is survived by her daughters — Lea Nagy, Dea Birdsong of Fairfield, California, and Glenda Goodrich of Salem, Oregon — and nine grandchildren, sixteen great-grandchildren, and eight great-great grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her son, Michael Derkum.

Dodie was born on April 23, 1920 in Skidmorem Missouri to Joseph and Ruth Lehman. She grew up on her grandparent’s farm during the Great Depression. The oldest of five children, Dodie told stories of dragging her siblings up before dawn to walk out to the fence line and watch the sunrise, or dressing her sisters up in fancy dresses and hats for photo sessions out in the farm fields. She always had an artist’s eye.

Dodie worked her way through college plucking chickens in a poultry factory. She graduated with a BA Degree from the NW Missouri State University in 1941, a time in history when only 3.8% of women graduated from college. In later years she took several graduate courses at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State College.

In 1942, Dodie met and married Milo Derkum, and in the mid-fifties the family moved to Richmond, California, where Dodie taught art and home economics for 25 years. After her divorce from Milo, Dodie married James Hamilton. She and Jay were married from 1964 to 1979. In 1982 Dodie retired from teaching and moved to Medford, where she launched a second successful career in painting and teaching art to students in her home studio. She met and married one of her watercolor students, Deane Brandon. Dodie was married to Deane from 1989 until he passed in 1994.

Among her many painting awards, Dodie was most proud of receiving a CFS Gold Medal Award from the American Watercolor Society show in New York in 1996. She was a past president of the Watercolor Society of Oregon and a past president of the American Association University of Women, Richmond, California Branch.In 1998, Dodie joined with six other female artists and started the Art and Soul Gallery in Ashland, Oregon. She showed her work at that gallery, as well as many others throughout California and Oregon, and served on the board of directors for Art and Soul for several years where she made many friends and sold many paintings. The notebook inventory of Dodie’s completed works lists a total of 3,200 paintings. She was born to paint and continued to do so into the 99 th year of her life. “Art is my life,” she once said. “And it has been since I was very young, scribbling away at drawings on every scrap of paper I could find.”

Dodie’s work is noted for vibrant color and the fluid, sparkling quality of her watercolor medium. Her subjects ranged from realistic florals and landscapes to mixed media abstracts, but she is best known for her renditions of iris, her favorite flower. Dodie leaves behind a beautiful legacy of watercolor and acrylic artworks.

A woman with great determination and a positive attitude toward life, Dodie completed a half marathon at the age of 64, took a trip down class V rapids on the Colorado River at age 68, survived breast cancer at age 76, and, at age 85, she witnessed the Arab Spring uprising from a hotel balcony in Egypt. She traveled all over the world throughout her 100-year life. She had a wonderful sense of humor even at the end when some of her last words were playful joking with her three daughters who cared for her during the last weeks of life and were there by her side when she passed.

A celebration of life will be scheduled sometime in the future when social and environmental circumstances allow for group gatherings. Here’s to the 100-year life of the amazing artist, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother, Dodie. May she rest in peace after a beautiful life well-lived.

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