Sunset, El Capitan (CA) (watercolor, 2015)

Copyrighted © by Joann Carrabbio. All rights reserved.

 

 

Darlingtonia Californica (watercolor, 2015)

Copyrighted © by Joann Carrabbio. All rights reserved.

 

 

McKenzie River Lavender Farm (watercolor, 2015)

Copyrighted © by Joann Carrabbio. All rights reserved.

 

 

A Storm Blowing In (watercolor, 2019)
Umpqua Lighthouse State Park, Oregon

Copyrighted © by Joann Carrabbio. All rights reserved.

 

 

Tamolitch/Blue Pool Reflection (watercolor, 2016)
McKenzie River Trail, Oregon

Copyrighted © by Joann Carrabbio. All rights reserved.

 

 

McKenzie River Lavender Farm #2 (watercolor, 2020)

Copyrighted © by Joann Carrabbio. All rights reserved.

 

 

Oregon Autumn Leaves (oil, 2018)

Copyrighted © by Joann Carrabbio. All rights reserved.

 

 

Aspen Trees in Fall (oil, 2012)

Copyrighted © by Joann Carrabbio. All rights reserved.

 

—Paintings and Artist Statement appear here with Carrabbio’s permission.

 

Artist Statement

The natural world is my subject matter. My desire to create paintings from nature is best illustrated by quotations drawn from On a Farther Shore, The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson [Broadway Books, 2013] by William Souder, in which he writes about Carson:

She said the concept of nature was itself a tricky construct, but that she liked the simple definition that identified nature as “the part of the world that man did not make.” ...Carson said she was often mystified by the reaction when she showed people the many forms of life flourishing in a tidal pool. Were these living entities edible? Could they be made into some kind of useful product? Carson said she could scarcely understand these questions when it was impossible to “assign a value” to creatures so exquisite that their mere existence should be cause for contentment with the peerless universe.

[page 337 in the chapter “High Tides and Low”]

I feel the same way about nature. I love to focus on a detail and build on its structural design through repetition into the larger composition of form in a simplified abstracted style. In this process I go back and forth with realism as the source, and through translation I try to convey my personal language. I love to spread paint across a surface. My paintings are created as a metaphor for the color, light and shadow, texture, rhythm, pattern, and compositional designs and structures I see and love in nature.

Joann Carrabbio

is a visual artist, naturophile, and retired educator who lives in Oregon with her husband, MaRco Elliott, also an artist and an author. Originally from Michigan, she earned a BFA degree in painting and drawing from Wayne State University, Detroit in 1973. After graduation and travel she relocated to Los Angeles, California, where she obtained teaching credentials from UCLA and California State University, Dominguez Hills. She then taught drawing, painting, sculpture, and advanced placement art for the Los Angeles Unified School District for 27 years.

During this period, Carrabbio also did free-lance work as a fine and graphic artist with mural commissions for EMI-Capitol Records and the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Her work has been included in Drawings USA (exhibition, Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul), and has been published in several books on murals: Painting the Towns: Murals of California by Robin J. Dunitz and James Prigoff; Street Gallery: Guide to 1000 Los Angeles Murals by Robin Dunitz; and Le Pied du Mur (The Foot of the Wall) and The Secret of Scratchboard by MaRco Elliott (LTA [Le Temps Aprivoisé]; Paris, France).

In 2009, after living in Los Angeles for 35 years, Carrabbio relocated to Eugene, Oregon with her husband and their daughter, Chloe, who recently graduated from college. In 2014, Carrabbio and Elliott were credited in a Los Angeles Museum of Art exhibition, Edward Biberman, Abbott Kinney, and the Story of Venice.

Find her website galleries (Flowers, Leaves, Marine, Landscape, & Birds) at: http://joannacarrabbio.com/Paintings.aspx

And her Instagram site: https://www.instagram.com/joanncarrabbio/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Coping: Threats posed by coronavirus pandemic inspire artist Joann Carrabbio to take refuge in the beauties of nature, an art profile by Randi Bjornstad in Eugene Scene (2 April 2020)

⚡ Two of a Kind: Lane Co. Creative Couples--ART--MaRco Elliott & Joanna Carrabbio by Sarah Glass in Free for All News (5 December 2019)

⚡ What Happens to a Dream Deferred?, an acrylic mural (1993–1995) by students under the direction of artists/teachers Marco Elliott and Joann Carrabbio at Venice High School, Los Angeles (image archived at the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles online)