Mary Jo Rabbene

My drug of choice has always been art.  When I was a kid my ambition in life was to sit on a corner in Greenwich Village and paint portraits.  For my 10th birthday my mother gave me a set of pastels, a set of charcoals, paper and an easel along with a Walter T. Foster “How to Draw” book.  I can’t begin to tell you how happy I was.  

I was born and raised in New York.  We started in Brooklyn and eventually moved out to Long Island.  My love of art, particularly Norman Rockwell, began in my childhood.  Every week the Saturday Evening Post would feature his work on the cover.  I collected all of them! Art has been my entire life.  It is my tranquilizer when I’m down, my best friend when I’m up. When people say it is a gift from God, nothing could be truer.  So many people resort to drugs and alcohol when life gets burdensome, an artist sits down at an easel and all the stresses dissolve, replaced with a peace and calm no drug could provide.

I didn’t pursue a career in art.  I am of the generation where a female’s top priority was to snatch herself a husband and take care of his every need.  So, as expected I married.  After which my art was the background to my life.  Becoming a mother somehow brought my desire for art to the surface and I heard about an art school owned and operated by Norman Rockwell’s student!  Well, I died and went to heaven.  I attended the Stevenson Academy of Traditional Art for years.  Mr. Stevenson taught Rockwell’s technique which was a rigid one.  Realism was his only way. Over the years I did mainly portraits while my girls were young for extra income and had a craft business as well.

Years went by and after pursuing a career as a Surgical Technologist (I know, I know, yikes), I attended CW Post for Interior Design.  A career in interior design brought together all the different forms of art I loved.  I painted murals, hand painted furniture, floral arrangements, even landscaping!  The happiest times of my life.  But, as life dishes out more and more challenges, I found myself on the move to Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan.  What?  How?  Why?  Long story.

My life in Grosse Pointe has centered around family, but what I didn’t bargain for was art sessions at the War Memorial.  Wow!  I started going there soon after I moved and for the second time in my life, I died and went to heaven.  Life in Grosse Pointe has been so very fruitful for me.  My yard became my canvas and gardening, combined with art, truly heaven.

I am honored to be a member of this wonderful group of fellow artists.  Thank you.