Jim Rabby – Artist Bio

in Artist, Rabby, Jim

b. 1947

Texas/New Mexico, Painting, Abstract, Landscape 

Born in Mobile, Alabama and raised in Houston, Texas, Jim Rabby played with paints in the back room of his parent’s art supply and interior decorating store. He attended the University of Houston, paying for his education with revenues from the paintings he sold, and majored in Economics. After graduating, he opened a gallery in Houston. Inspired by Picasso whom he said lived in “voracious curiosity,” Rabby experimented with many styles and media, from body painting to portraying sporting events.  Rabby now makes his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Movement has been an unrelenting theme in all of his work as it has throughout his life. At one year of age, he was diagnosed with polio. “I had to face life and death issues at all early age,” Rabby said. “So I’m just happy with the dynamics of being able to show up.” Suddenly his recurring statement about showing up echoed with new meaning. It seemed to embody a way of life that Rabby embraced-that everything is possible in life if you are open to experiencing it, and it suggested movement toward something, which implied growth and expansion. 

Rabby’s modern, contemporary artwork is at once outrageous, insightful, playful, thoughtful, creative, passionate, original, imaginative, unassuming, resourceful, courageous and charming. Rabby shifts back and forth between painting abstracts and landscapes. Landscape or abstract, Jim’s paintings exude a sense of sensuality which he intends as an appeal to the senses.

His work has been exhibited in major museums and corporate headquarters throughout the country, such as IBM, Honeywell, General Motors and Coca-Cola. Lyndon Johnson, whom Jim spent a day with in 1972, joined his list of private collectors, which also includes Johnny Carson, Jimmy Connors and H.L. Hunt among others.