As Dorothy Redding‘s memory faded, she would often repeat sentences, forgetting she had said them a few minutes prior. But that rarely happened when she talked about art.

Art was its own language, and she spoke it fluently. When she repeated herself, it was mostly for emphasis. She stressed the importance of the “masters” — the pre-19th century Italian, Dutch, Flemish and English painters who set artistic standards for generations and influenced her own work.

“She was more fluid, more comfortable — everything flowed when she talked about that,” said Jeannie Finnegan, a geriatric care manager and dementia practitioner who met with Redding for about a year and a half and documented her life story. “You could definitely pick up on the passion of it.”

Redding spent her life sharing her passion with amateur artists in the Baltimore area, teaching students of all ages and backgrounds how to use classic techniques to create their own masterpieces. Her lessons live on through them and their work and in the hundreds of paintings and drawings she left behind.

Redding, who taught at Howard Community College and later her own school, the Redding Academy of Fine Arts in Columbia, died April 8 of Alzheimer’s disease. She was 83 (or 70, or 65, because she believed that “age is just a number” and would lie about it frequently).

Redding was born Sept. 19, 1941, to John Clifton White and Della LaVerne Peer. She was the middle child, sandwiched between an older brother, Leonard, and a younger sister, Linda. The family moved around a lot for her father’s work, but she mostly grew up in the D.C. area, where Redding spent many of her days at the National Gallery of Art with her grandmother.

She inherited a love of art from her paternal great-grandmother, an artist and college professor. Her paintings decorated the walls of Redding‘s grandparents’ house, and as a child, she would try to recreate them using pencil and paper. Her mother told her she’d be poor if she pursued a career in art, but Redding told Finnegan that she knew she could find a way to make it work.

When she was 14, she met Daniel “Danny” Redding through a mutual friend while living in the Baltimore suburbs. He “followed me around like a puppy dog,” she told Finnegan, and they were attached at the hip until the day he died in 2016.

After high school, Danny Redding insisted on getting married, so they wed in 1962 at St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church. Their interests differed greatly, but Dorothy Redding always said they could read each other’s minds. Their marriage wasn’t perfect, but they always loved and respected one another.

Danny Redding encouraged his wife to pursue her dreams of becoming an artist, and he supported her as she studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees there and occasionally took additional classes after graduation. She enjoyed creating portraits and realistic still-life paintings, and her work has been featured in galleries including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Marine Art Gallery, Jaffae Art Gallery and the Museum of the Dog.

As a teacher, Dorothy Redding connected personally with her students, interviewing them about their goals and objectives to better guide her pedagogy. She taught the basics and built upon them, to great success. While teaching at Howard Community College, she once hosted an art exhibit full of students’ work. Their art was so good that the president of the college told Redding worriedly that the school didn’t have insurance for museum pieces, Finnegan said.

Redding opened her own art school in the early 2000s after her husband, who worked in real estate, purchased a new building and gave her space there. She was excited to teach students of all ages and offered classes there for about a decade.

Francine Diggs was newly retired when she decided to take up art as a hobby. She’d never taken classes before, but that was no issue for Redding, who embraced her students with positivity and kindness. Redding would often walk around the classroom to look over each student’s shoulder and check their progress, and she was known to repeat the phrase “TYT” — trust your teacher.

“She was a human being first — nothing else mattered,” Diggs said. “That’s what made her special. Her students respected her a lot — not just her skill set but her humanity — and she had the tendency to endear herself to a lot of the students.”

As she developed Alzheimer’s, Redding also found deep friendships with her caregivers. Nichole Galvin, a lawyer who initially met Redding while she dealt with a nasty legal dispute over her late husband’s estate, eventually gained her power of attorney.

Over the years, their relationship morphed from business to familial, and Galvin saw her not only as an eccentric artist but a fiercely independent and principled woman. Sometimes, her personality came across not just in her actions but the way she described them — for example, Redding was a lifelong vegetarian because she said, “I don’t eat flesh.”

She was also a big animal lover. She was particularly fond of Alaskan malamutes, which she kept as pets and brought with her to class. She belonged to the Alaskan Malamute Club of America and fostered dogs. Her last malamute, Navarre, stayed at her side until he died of cancer last December.

At the time, Redding was struggling significantly with her health, and her caregivers wanted to shield her from the pain of seeing her dog put down. But Navarre wouldn’t go to sleep without the comfort of his companion, so Galvin wrapped him in a blanket that Redding always sat with.

It was only then, enveloped by her scent and her love, that Navarre finally laid his head down and died.

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