Lois was born on March 8, 1956, in Cortland, N.Y., the fifth child of Leon and Beverly Strickland, and is remembered as a beautiful baby and the light of her mother’s life. Her father’s work as a minister took the family from New York to Texas and later to other states — and a total of 19 different homes over the course of Lois’s childhood and youth. Elder Strickland was an avid naturalist and painter whose interests influenced young Lois, who came to revel in the natural wonders particular to every region she inhabited.
In 1972, the family had returned to the Northeast, and Lois entered school in Freeport, Maine, just a few miles from the site where she was to spend her entire adult life, learning, loving, and developing as an artist. Her skill in making conversation gave a shy 16-year-old Roddy Pervier the courage to talk with her. They quickly became best buddies, and the friendship remained the core of their 42-year love affair. They married on June 15, 1975, and set about building a home on the Royal River that has become a welcoming haven for treasured friends and family and, of course, animals — beloved pets and wild neighbors, too.
Lois and Rod loved to explore the mountains and Atlantic shore together, hiking, camping, backpacking and canoeing. Lois left her natural comfort zone and followed Rodona31/2month adventure island-hopping in the Caribbean along with numerous trips to tropical places in the South Pacific and then sailing from Maine to Key West and all along the Maine coast. Lois and Rod were inseparable in their 42 years together.
Lois’s had a passion for fairness, justice and inclusiveness that made her a natural for community involvement and town government. Her affiliations included the Housing Committee where she advocated for elders and others who benefited from her strong voice. She also played a leading role in the formation of Bradbury Mountain Arts, an artists’ collective that promoted and provided art and culture for the community at large. She always exhibited at the holiday art show in Pownal Center.
In 1996 she had left a 16- year career in product design at L.L. Bean to concentrate on her own ideas about form, color and light that defined a prolific and lauded creative life. Self-taught and educated, Lois had the quiet confidence to trust her own vision, her own experimental impulses, and her own rich muse, submersing herself in nature.
She was also well-versed in holistic medicine in particular and health issues in general, all thanks to tireless personal study. Her ability went beyond a knowing, healing touch. Throughout her illness, medical professionals tended to interact with her as if she were a colleague and not simply a patient.
Lois reached out to pull people in to her compassionate presence. Her nieces and nephews recall magical and informative nature walks as well as Strickland originals painted on their fingernails. For friends and acquaintances, Rod’s and her home was an oasis of joy, music, food, and relief — whether from heartache or a painful knot in one’s shoulder blade. She was attentive to her mother, Beverly, at a nearby retirement home, where she organized songfests and exercise classes for the whole resident community. And no Memorial Day passed without Lois’s fresh gardening on family plots at the cemetery. Even as she created an environment of caring and protection for all comers, she required of herself and of those she loved best to think critically. Her innate distrust of conventional wisdom and fixed ideas caused this seeker to learn and grow every day, while her pure honesty and deeply held convictions were more than balanced by a salty and self-deprecating humor.
Lois is survived by her adoring husband, Rod Pervier, her mother, Beverly Strickland, sister Jayne Colby (and Dan), brother Mark Strickland (and Susan), and the many beloved members of her extended family. She was preceded in death by her father, Leon Strickland, sister Betsy Keuhl, and brother Carl Strickland.
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