Rabbett Strickland's experience straddled two cultures during his formative years. Rabbett grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, distanced from relatives on the Red Cliff and Bad River Reservations. Due to historic child-welfare policies, after the death of his grandparents, his mother and her siblings were sent to an Indian Boarding School in Tomah, Wisconsin. They were later placed in foster care with a non-Native American family and self-relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area during World War II.

Art was the one constant in his life as his mother, aunts and uncles were all talented painters, however, they didn't consider art in a commercial context; rather they gave it away as a source of healing. It would be many years before Rabbett would abandon this altruistic approach and seek to make a living from his art.

Rabbett realized he could draw at an early age and attempted his first oil when only 15. At the time, college was not an option for him, so he learned a trade as a journeyman painter at which he worked on and off for 25 years. During these years and inspired by the old masters, he devoured every book he could find on Botticelli, Rubens and Michelangelo among others of the great masters. Later, impressionism and surrealism also fascinated him, but it was his love of the Renaissance masters that helped him develop his talent. Denied the benefits of formal training, Rabbett taught himself by endlessly studying the works of those painters that he so admired.

Today, Rabbett's work is steeped in the history, mythology and beliefs of his people. His paintings are allegorical, relating stories from Native American legend or depicting defining moments from their history. The composition and content of his work are revealed to him in his dreams and from the stories told to him by his mother. Nanabozho, the Ojibwe Great Spirit appears in every painting, seen as half man, half hare; the ever-present trickster plays either a leading role or is at times, merely an observer. Rabbett's serene and fluid style is pervasive in all of his works, and easily recognizable. Rabbett is also a poet, mathematician and accomplished musician, but now, finally he is pursuing, full time, his life's passion, painting.

From article, "Native American Renaissance Man" by Roz Dunford, American Indian Review, No. 28, Spring, 2001