Nancy
Dolan
Artist
About
At a young age, my mom said I had a “knack for art” so she enrolled me in the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago for drawing and painting classes. I’m sure glad she did because since then, I’ve never stopped sketching, drawing, doodling or painting.
However, as it turned out, I also had a knack for helping people mend their wounds. So I spent 5-years at Purdue University, studying nursing, journalism, and fine arts. And after graduation, I moved to California where I completed my masters degree in public health at UCLA.
I spent the next three decades as a full-time research nurse at UCLA, in addition to raising a family with my awesome husband Michael. And after nearly four decades, I retired from UCLA, and for three years thereafter I worked as a hospice nurse for a private company.
However, it was always drawing and painting that gave me peace of mind and provided a place of joy and solace, far away from the intense care of terminally ill patients. And although I’m still a licensed RN, my art career has finally taken top priority over my nursing career, and I now consider myself an abstract expressionist artist in both painting and collage.
I studied collage with Kathy Leader in Brentwood, California, and studied abstract art under Olga Soby, Molly Leach, and Rinske Douna. In the past few years during the pandemic, I took a variety of online classes using hairdryers, balloons, pallette knives and pens. Additionally, my fluid art was enhanced with gravity, heat, airflow and sponges.
I feel so excited, when every single day, art politely invites me to dance with uncertainty and doubt, where I can always let go, and follow my divine, Holy Spirit in the direction it wants to go.
* In case you're wondering, none of my work has ever been done on a computer!
