Samuel Abelow

03/26/2026

This painting is titled L**h L**ha.

“L**h L**ha” is the famous verse in the Torah where God tells Abraham to go forth — go to yourself. It’s a theme of journey: leaving one situation and embarking toward another.

This painting is on cardboard, using acrylic paint and acrylic spray paint. I painted it outdoors on a very warm day in March. It’s based on a series of watercolor studies, and I also think of it as a study for a future oil painting, since the current version is on found cardboard.

The imagery shows four legs.

▪️The back leg wears a Blundstone boot.
▪️Two lower legs and feet are natural and unclothed.
▪️In the front, there’s a sneaker — actually referencing the most recent sneaker I bought: Lululemon Cityverse sneakers.
🙃 I often include clothing or objects that I personally own.

Some other themes:
▪️ Duality, here expressed through the opposite colors orange and teal/turquoise.

▪️Narrative ques: hand pointing downward and another pointing upward
▪️White-gold light entering the empty head

This belongs to what I think of as my mythopoetic style of painting: identifying the themes of my own life with archetypal themes, and creating through that prism.

03/15/2026

Chabad of the Lower East Side invited me to host an event where I welcomed guests into an interactive experience of live portraits.

My approach is simple: instead of traditional illustration, I sit with someone for a few minutes and get a feel for their personality and aura — what they do, what they love, sometimes even their astrology sign.

▪️From there I create a portrait that’s expressive, symbolic, and completely unique to them.

The Rebbe once said that every soul is a diamond.

▪️That’s what I feel when I sit with someone — the power of each person’s presence — translating a small piece of their spark into art.

So we brought the soul, we brought the social.

We had a great time on the Lower East Side, dancing late into the night with a fantastic band.

More of this soon.

Event at:
Organized with:
Thank you to: .arts

02/19/2026

This “self-portrait imagined as a mystic” was painted right after my exhibition in Crown Heights. At that time I was doing a lot of works on paper around this theme — even drawing versions of it on the backs of postcards that people took home from the show.

Back in the studio, I just went all prima — improvising, working fresh, letting the paint stay alive while building the figure.

The symbolism is consistent:

▪️two sides of the face,
▪️ a bird as divine presence
▪️ golden light-honey into the head

These are motifs I reimagine from Kabbalistic and other mystical sources.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about materiality — the linen with a transparent primer so the raw surface still comes through, oil sticks for that punchy color, and moments where the painting catches splatters from liquid oil paint, either from the floor or the process itself.

This one was painted with a lot of joy and fervor.

▪️I think of the studio as a place to inhabit intensity.
▪️To experience presence in the body.

Painting feels like an act of life — a way of regulating through life’s moments, and a place where I can really contact that experience directly.

I find myself meditating on this figure — the intensity he’s holding, the paradox inside him:

▪️from shadow, we can find illumination,
▪️from light, we access clarity

He holds determination and surrender at the same time.

▪️Force and softness.
▪️Control and release.

There is so much beauty happening right now. I see incredible insight and work from people in my family, from friends in my community, from spaces like , and from so many people who are doing deep inner and outer work.

▪️This painting is about honoring that.
▪️About feeling excited by it.

There’s something here that feels like an electric, diamond-clear consciousness — and at the same time a warm, hot heart energy.

For me, that’s the unifying of masculine and feminine.

Inside each of us.
And between us.
That’s the hope.
That’s the dream.

06/12/2025

03/29/2018

So excited to share this commissioned painting of a waterfall in Ithaca, NY. While visiting the town, I met two Cornell professors whose enthusiasm for art led to this opportunity to impressionistically paint one of their favorite locations. The painting shipped out yesterday! I feel really good about the project, which is helping to fund my own ongoing projects.

12/05/2017

My sanctuary in recent years has always been the beach, which I try to spend as much time at in the summer.

My sanctuary in recent years has always been the beach, which I try to spend as much time at in the summer. Maybe it’s because I was born in July, or maybe it’s because my particular physiology prefers the beaming summer sun, and the humid, hot air (attributes which caused my younger sister labe...

10/07/2017

On the surface, this may seem like a simple still life. But, in fact, it is rich with personal and universal symbolism. Read more about my painting and thought process: http://www.roskogreen.com/blog/2017/10/7/still-life-alchemy

08/22/2017

Painted this large oil painting outdoors this summer! The title is "Contentment, With Revolving Forms" -- What do you feel from it?

"This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification." --Herman Hesse

"Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship."--Buddha

08/14/2017

Recent painting of a "Resting Mother" paired with a vintage frame, found at a antique thrift shop in Ithica, NY. How do you like the pairing?

08/03/2017

Just put the last touches on this painting - "The Embrace with Revolving Forms and Colored Dots." Oil paint, on 36x48 canvas.