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Father Maur van Doorslaer lived a kind of double life.
For decades, the Benedictine monk spent half the year working in a studio at an abbey in Belgium, painting abstract art in varying shades of white. For the other half, he took in the High Desert summers at St. Andrew's Abbey in Valyermo, where he made "cookies," his name for the folksy porcelain plaques he designed depicting angels, saints and biblical scenes.
"For six months of the year, I'm a serious artist," he told The Times in 1986, "and for six months a year, I play with dolls."
Van Doorslaer, whose earth-colored ceramics became a moneymaker for the Antelope Valley abbey and a fixture for decades at its annual fall festival, died Feb. 1 of complications relating to colon cancer at a hospice near the religious order's mother abbey in Bruges, Belgium, said Father Francis Benedict, abbot emeritus of St. Andrew's. He was 87.
Van Doorslaer's angels, which feature wide-open eyes and playful designs such as firefighter angels, angels with gardening tools and angels with poodles, built him a loyal fan base across North America.
"It's a very simple and kind of primitive art, but it does evoke spirituality," said Benedict, a fellow monk who first met Van Doorslaer in 1965, when the California-based monks enlisted his help in finding an industry that could help sustain them financially.
After 10 months of traveling to Mexico and studying folk art, Van...