Of his expressive, abstract oil landscapes and florals, Jim Rabby says: "Painting is accessing and practicing consciousness. It's a portal. I love bringing passion and fierceness to the space, creating great value. He stretches his own canvases, makes a charcoal sketch and then works up his palette, sometimes pounding "the paint for hours. . . .I'm never warming up, I simply fray and I back off and I fry and I back off; it's a flutter, that's my range."

Rabby has been painting since the mid 1960s and living in Santa Fe since the mid 1980s. He occupies a 1912 downtown adobe studio and gallery. A native of Houston, Texas, he had polio as a child, and his interest in art was stimulated by the many vol...