The artists have a long relationship as teacher and student. Laura Shabott has studied with Robert Henry in three different courses over the past couple of years.

“Bob works with unexpected materials and bursts with vitality,” Shabott says of Henry, “He brings a spirit of playfulness to artmaking and has a great gift for preserving the magic.”

Henry has strong praise for Shabott: “Being creative means playing. Serious playing is the way to find your potential as an artist. Laura’s understanding of what I taught is remarkable. I don’t think any other student has understood it as well.”

Robert Henry is currently represented in the CCMoA exhibition, Go Figure – Exploring the Human Form with his painting, “The Struggling Artist.” (The Image is shown on this page.) He began as an artist in New York City studying with the famed teacher Hans Hofmann and as a young man was deeply involved in the Abstract Expressionism movement. His figurative expressionist paintings came from his imagination using drawing skills and an advanced level of technical and compositional skills.

Henry taught at Brooklyn College for thirty years, where he is now a Professor Emeritus. He has taught for years in Provincetown, MA as well as many art schools.

Henry has lectured extensively, curated and written exhibition catalog essays, served on the jury for the Fulbright Awards, and been President of the Board of Trustees of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. His work is in many private collections, as well as in 20 museum and corporate collections.

In 2015, Laura Shabott returned to painting and drawing through a Romanos Rizk Scholarship from the Museum School at PAAM, a Cape Resident Scholarship from the Fine Arts Work Center and a gift from Berta Walker to study with artist Robert Henry.

A follower of Hans Hofmann's tenets, Shabott teaches figure drawing and figure painting at Cape Cod Museum of Art and PAAM. She is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (now at TUFTS) in multi-disciplinary studies.