Dorothy Catherine Brott Liberty
Dorothy Catherine Brott Liberty, artist, wife and mother, was a striking woman with big blue eyes and a vivid personality. She was born in Marquette Michigan, on August 27, 1920, the daughter of Leo Brott and Catherine Lillian Stenglein Brott. She was a resident of Mercer Island from 1969 until the mid-1990s. She died November 6, 2013 in Seattle, in the company of her children.
Dorothy began painting oils seriously at age 11 and continued to paint for the next 76 years. Although she worked primarily in oils she also produced art, both representational and abstract, in watercolor, ink, charcoal, pastels, texture paints and concrete. Her teachers included Francis Chapin and Rudy Penn at the Chicago Art Institute, Louis Bunce and Michel Russo at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland and John Nava of Los Angeles.
Her work appeared in many juried shows and won prizes from the 1940s through the 1990s including the Seattle and Portland Art Museums, the Frye Art Museum and Henry Gallery in Seattle, Hui No’eau Visual Arts Center on Maui, and other galleries and shows in Washington, Oregon, Michigan, Hawaii and California.
She contributed her time to public schools, the various churches where she and her family worshipped and to arts organizations. She was President of the Mercer Island Visual Arts League for many years.
Dorothy managed to combine a career in art with being a wife and mother when such an arrangement was unusual. This was made possible by the loving and respectful support for her life as an artist provided by her husband Bob Liberty who had his own distinguished career as a CPA with Moss Adams & Company. They were married while Bob was serving in the US Navy during World War II, a marriage that lasted more than 61 years.
Dorothy often said that her family was her other great passion. Her three children (Kathleen of Christchurch New Zealand, Sara of Edmonds, Washington and Robert of Portland, Oregon) all learned from her example to live life vigorously and to value creativity. Dorothy Liberty is survived by them, their spouses Doug, Peter and Khanh, her three grandchildren and their families and her sister Judy Brott Katz of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Memorial services will be held at Exeter House at Trinity Parish Episcopal Church in Seattle in June. Memorial contributions may be made in support of the Dorothy Liberty Gallery at Trinity Parish Church or Trinity by the Sea, in Kihei, Hawaii.
