Cancer:  In November of 2021 Lois was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer.  With caring medical support from Memorial Sloan Kettering physicians, nurses, and great staff, she battled this disease for almost one-and-a-half years before succumbing to a predetermined outcome.   If only the world was full of  people like MSK employees, our planet would be a much better place to live.

Throughout Lois ordeal and treatments, she found great pleasure in family, friends, and painting.  She especially watched numerous landscape painting YouTubes instructing one how to become a better artist.  These occupied her mind while improving her brush strokes.  She continued to paint even up until the very day she entered the hospital only to return home as a Hospice patient.  That morning she finished the "Flugertown" watercolor I had requested.

Towards the end of her life Lois wasn't always capable of signing her work with a full signature and sometimes she would only use her initials "LO".  But she never gave up; she always thought of others, putting them ahead of herself; that's the person she always was.

Words below reflect both those of Lois and her husband.

Oakwood Drive:  Somewhere in Mohonk Preserve, not far from Duck Pond, there’s a large rock we’d sit upon to rest before continuing our trek.  These trees along Oakwood Drive, in their autumn splendor, caught my fancy so I had to paint this watercolor.

 

Along the Rail Trail:  New York City’s Ashokan Reservoir along the Rail Tail, not far from the Boiceville terminus. 

The tailout:  A tailout is the downstream end of a run or pool where water depth shallows while flow speeds increase before dropping into the next stretch.  This one is located at the bottom of Esopus Creek’s Trestle Pool well within eyesight of the Ashokan Rail Trail footbridge, where a railroad trestle once stood.

 

Stone House:  The Stone House serves as the clubhouse for the Wintoon Fly Fishing Club.  I asked Lois to paint this watercolor to serve as a possible book cover dealing with the history of these historic Catskill trout waters.

The Rise:  Based upon one of his photographs, my husband challenged me to paint a watercolor of a rising trout.  His photo depicted the head of a brook trout, with his fly rod on the far bank behind it while sunlight distorted the color of the fish and water holding it.  A challenge it was.

Using artistic license, the fly rod was eliminated from the painting while Ed tried to describe how the trout should appear.  However, left to my own imagination for the most part I proceeded to fabricate colors depicting the water and landscape design.  Following two attempts at this watercolor, readers now see the final result.  This watercolor appeared in the May 2022 Gazette, newsletter of the Catskill Fly Tyers Guild.

Between September of 2020 through March of 2023, the month Lois passed away, the Guild's Gazette newsletter included fifteen of her watercolors.  Only in January of 2022, after Lois started her first treatment of chemotherapy was she unable to supply a piece of artwork for publication.  However, in January of 2024 ten months after Lois had passed, the Gazette included one final landscape, one of her last and one of her best--- "The last Christmas card."