Mary Abbott: I Am a Sailor's Daughter
June 4, 2026 – July 17, 2026
McCormick Gallery, 835 W. Washington Blvd, Chicago, IL 60607
She Loved the water... her father, Lt. Commander Henry Livermore Abbott, was a sailor, a decorated submarine captain in the First World War and a Naval advisor to the FDR administration during WWII. As an introduction, I've written a little remembrance The Last Time I Saw Mary… In May of 2019 I traveled to the Long Island enclave of Southampton for my annual visit with Mary Abbott. I’d been making this pilgrimage for about 15 years, where I would visit with Mary in her tidy ranch house at 125 Corrigan Street. We would catch up on life, go to lunch, sit in her garden, have some wine and spend time mucking about in her studio. There, I would pick out paintings to send back to Chicago and unearth works on paper from her disarrayed flat file drawers. These were generally unsigned and I would sit her down, put a pencil in her hand and make her sign away. Mary didn’t have a commercial bone in her body and did not enjoy signing her work. She had horrible handwriting, was dyslexic and had a hard time fitting her name in the space provided. Very often works received her scribble only on the day they left her studio.