After twenty years of teaching at Beaver, I was fortunate to take a sabbatical at a moment when I was ready for a change in my artistic practice.
I have been making abstract work for a long time, but over the past five years, I’ve been pulled in a new but familiar direction. What if I made images from my source material, photographs of moments I had experienced in nature? Nature has always been a place of solace for me, going back to the woods behind my childhood home and the big rock where I sat looking out at the lake each summer. These experiences have stayed with me, offering a sense of quiet, wonder, and connection.
Moving in this new direction was exciting but also unsettling. My abstract work was successful. People liked it, and it was regularly purchased by both individual and institutional buyers. Yet increasingly, I felt as though I was repeating a rote process, making work I knew how to make rather than asking
new questions. I needed to learn something, to take a risk, and to reconnect with a part of myself that had been waiting for more space.
My sabbatical gave me that space. For the first time in years, I could go to my studio every day and give this transition the time and attention it needed. I could experiment, make mistakes, follow unexpected paths, and sit with uncertainty without rushing toward a finished product. Much of this work remained private as I gradually grew more comfortable and confident in this new direction.
The paintings and drawings in this exhibition reflect that period of exploration and change. They emerge from my experiences in nature and from a desire to pay closer attention to the world around me. Mary Oliver’s words, “Attention is the beginning of devotion,” have become a touchstone for this new work.
The sabbatical did not simply give me more time to make art; it gave me permission to slow down, to look more closely, and to discover what might happen when I followed a feeling rather than a familiar formula.
Rebecca Roberts
More about the artist: Rebecca Roberts is a visual artist whose work explores light, color, and the natural world. She received her B.F.A. from Alfred University and her M.F.A. from The University of Iowa. Born in Katonah, NY, she is now based in Massachusetts, with a studio at Waltham Mills, just down the Charles River from her home.
Roberts’ work has been featured in solo and two-person exhibitions across the Northeast, including Stillness at Dryden Gallery in Providence, RI (2026), Eventide at The Tender Art Space in Concord, MA (2025), Where the Center Is at Room 68 in Provincetown, MA (2023), and A Slice of Life at Drive-By Projects in Watertown, MA (2023).
Her paintings have also been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as Raw Emotion (Jameson + Thompson, Boston, 2022–2023), Sweet Season (Gallery 444, Provincetown, 2023), and Chasing Light (Gallery 263, Cambridge, 2021). Her work was featured in New American Paintings (Northeast Edition, Issue #98) and is part of the corporate collection at Fidelity Investments.