About Me
This website is in honor of our beloved mother, Rachel Abend. Her artistic talent was extraordinary, and she painted prolifically after she retired, finally able to fulfill her dream of spending all her time painting and creatively. She died in 2022 and we want to ensure her legacy of art lives on in the digital world.
I have wanted to paint since I was quite young — but life always seemed to be in the way for much too long. Reality frequently presented too grim a face to allow for such indulgences.
I’ve always enjoyed art: as a child I drew and painted with some innate talent and much enthusiasm, in college and graduate school I took elective art history and archaeology courses to complement my classics major, and in the past I dabbled in drawing and sketching, oil painting, and pastels (mostly self-taught and years ago) when opportunities presented themselves (too few and far between). In addition, I grew up in a house filled with paintings by my late maternal grandfather, August H. O. Rolle, who was a prolific but relatively little known American impressionistic landscape artist in Washington, D.C., in the early 20th century (his media were oil, etchings, lithographs, and watercolor — see his page on this website).
And then, about three years ago, a new opportunity presented itself: time and circumstances conspired to allow me to begin painting in watercolor, a medium with which I had no prior experience. Fortuitously, I was entranced. I enjoy the process of putting color on a surface, especially vivid watercolor paint on that blank sheet of watercolor paper. Even when the result might be somewhat less than I had hoped for, the act of painting fulfills me. And occasionally watercolor, by its nature, provides some pleasing accidents! I now paint landscapes, flowers and trees, birds and animals, abstracts, — whatever moves me. I have found that the more I paint the more I want to paint. It’s really quite addictive!
I have studied watercolor painting in New York City with Beverly Brodsky at the Parsons School of Design, Bill Alpert at the School of Visual Arts, Liz Exler at the CUNY Graduate Center, and Josette Urso and Judy Simonian at Cooper Union, and I have studied traditional Chinese painting with Shirley Pu Wills at the China Institute.
My special passion in painting is color — as you can see — vivid, dramatic, and bold, as well as misty, mysterious and subtle.
Enjoy your visit and come back often — the paintings are constantly being updated.
Former home of Yves St. Laurent – the “Blue House”
Abstract after my weeping willow tree
I am including this special note of thanks and gratitude to all those who have helped facilitate my return to painting and to all those who have inspired me, both knowingly and unknowingly, and to all my children and their significant others, who are especially encouraging and supportive and who offer excellent and useful critiques when asked (and sometimes unasked!) — I could not be doing this without you!
