Wendy Gray Rabin
Landscapes and Portraits in Oils
Contact Wendy
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Artist's Statement: About Wendy Rabin
I was born in Redwood City, California in 1957. As a child, I knew that I was destined to be an artist. I started drawing various subject matter from imagination, life and photographs, and was deeply influenced by the Italian Renaissance masters. During my high school years, I studied drawing and painting with oil painter Luis Busta in San Mateo, and also with painter and illustrator Dennis Nolan.
After two years of life drawing, rendering, and etching at the College of San Mateo, I enrolled in the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) and graduated with a certificate in drawing with distinction in 1980. Following graduation I continued my studies in oil with artist David Hardy in Oakland, and studied pastel and painting with artists Marjery Lester Leighton and Alan McCorkle at the Leighton Studio in San Francisco.
Most of my work during this time was in portraits and illustration. I began working as a high end custom picture framer during these years. In 1993, I began working on my own in oils while honing my skills as an oil painting restorer and framer at Witherspoon Art Gallery and Frame Shop in Lafayette, California. I began with landscapes of Southwest Native American ruins inspired by camping trips through Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado with my husband and daughter. In time, I added California landscapes and botanical illustrations of mostly California Native plant specimens from my gardens.
In 2008, a prayer was answered and I fulfilled my lifelong dream by traveling to Europe. I enjoyed two of the best weeks of my life as my husband and I journeyed through the architecture and art of Florence, Rome, Sienna, and Assisi. Two more trips in following years to Paris and Giverny inspired me to paint the beauty that I saw in Monet's Gardens.
In recent years, I have begun to focus more on creating art that expresses my longtime faith in Jesus Christ. My art is an expression of what I love, whether the human race, the natural world, or our Creator. I have been experimenting and exploring ways to express this through images of nature, people, and Earth within the Cosmos.