About Rebecca

Growing up in the Los Angeles area, I always loved to make art and was encouraged to do so. My mother started taking me to exhibitions at an early age, including a Rico Lebrun show when I was eight years old, which made a lasting impression. Some of my most precious memories are ditching high school to go art museums with my mom.

After studying English Literature at Colby College, Maine and The University of Wales in Swansea, Wales, I interned for a summer at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Returning to LA to work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, I led an effort to catalogue the entire collection for the first time in its forty-year history. There was a Mark Rothko exhibition at LACMA at the time that changed the course of my life. Rothko, along with Rembrandt, van Gogh and Monet, has been a constant source of inspiration and admiration. After seeing his work, I felt that Rothko had lived an art life, if not a personal one, that was extraordinarily rich and that had taken him to places of the heart and spirit where I would like to go. Coincidently, I came across a biography of Rothko's life and a catalogue of the Art Students League of New York, where Rothko studied, side by side in LACMA's library. These two inspired me to head to New York City and study at both the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design for six years. My teachers were the great figurative masters, Robert Beverly Hale ("Drawing Lessons of the Great Masters"), Ted Seth Jacobs and Ron Sherr.

During this time, I also lived in Switzerland and Yosemite Valley for three years, painting landscapes. In 1987, I moved to Santa Cruz, California, where my husband, Eric, and I raised our two daughters, Leia and Kira.

My teaching career started with children’s art classes and after earning my M.F.A., I taught college studio art for 28 years. Recently, I retired, and Eric and I moved to Guerneville, on the banks of the glorious Russian River. I’m now painting full-time and loving every minute. After all these years, I’m still as passionate about painting as I was when first starting out. The lesson that I learned from Rothko was spot on – that the art life is one of rich discoveries and rewards.

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