Each winter, artist Rosalind Farbush was determined to escape the South Shore winds that kept her inside her Hull home. Traveling to warm, sunny places, she would paint en plein air, in the open air.
“I like to capture the essence of the moment,’’ she told the Globe in 1998. “It may be a certain light on a building, an interesting person, or a gorgeous flower.’’
When Ms. Farbush died Feb. 17, she was three weeks into a winter sojourn to Tucson and had created seven new paintings, said her daughter, Bonnie Whittemore Ward of Durango, Colo.
“She would rather paint than breathe,’’ her daughter said. “Every morning she woke up, did her exercises, had her coffee, and started to paint.’’
Rosalind Farbush, known to friends and the South Shore artists’ community as Ros, only stopped painting after a fall resulted in a broken hip and clavicle. She was 83 when she died in Tucson Medical Center of congestive heart failure.
“She was very active, right up until the end,’’ said Kaitlin Thurlow, program assistant at the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset, where Ms. Farbush taught and exhibited her work for many years. “She was an inspiration, the way she painted right into her 80s. There was no question of her slowing down, ever.’’
Ms. Farbush was one of eight artists whose work was featured this winter in a show titled “Bostonia,’’ Thurlow said. She contributed four paintings depicting Fenway Park, Dorchester, and the Back Bay.
Born in Boston, Ms. Farbush grew up in Dorchester. Her parents were Eastern European immigrants, and as a child, she spent a year in bed after contracting polio. While recovering, her daughter said, she occupied herself with paints and paper.
Her parents wanted her to go to secretarial school, but Ms. Farbush “refused to learn to type,’’ her daughter said.
While Ms. Farbush attended Dorchester High School for Girls, art teacher Alva Glidden encouraged her and other students to go outside and paint.
“I never saw a flower until I got into her class,’’ Ms. Farbush told the Globe in 1998.
Glidden encouraged her to apply for a scholarship at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where Ms. Farbush studied and later taught for 30 years.
Over the decades, she gained a following among artists, critics, and the public for her exuberant style and use of bright colors.
In 1998, Judith Montminy wrote in the Globe that “vibrant blues, reds, yellows, and greens dance on the canvases that Cohasset artist Rosalind Farbush fills with passion and pizzazz.’’
Ms. Farbush’s website showcases paintings of subjects such as a police officer on a street, Amsterdam tulips, and windswept houses on Nantasket Beach.
Under one painting on her website, Ms. Farbush wrote: “Artists see things a lot differently. Because of the creativity in us we see a lot of colors that other people don’t see.’’
She was also known for her teaching, for being a mentor to young artists, and for bringing people on painting adventures.
Hingham artist Lynn Rizzotto met Ms. Farbush when she was leading a group of South Shore artists to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for one of her many painting trips.
“Ros brought the artists to many beautiful locations around the town to sketch and paint,’’ Rizzotto said. “She also generously introduced me to other teachers so I could absorb the native culture.’’
Scituate artist Valerie Vitali said Ms. Farbush “liked nothing better than what she called her ‘art safaris,’ ’’ for which she would gather a group of artist friends and drive into Boston.
“She would feed the meter, set up her easel, sit herself down on Newbury Street, and just paint,’’ she said. “She was a very spontaneous, very exuberant, very expressive painter.’’
In addition to teaching at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and the South Shore Art Center, Ms. Farbush taught students in Boston’s public schools, in Mexico, and at the Duxbury Art Association and the Cape Cod Art Association.
A former student, Kelley MacDonald of Tiverton, R.I., said that as a teacher, Ms. Farbush “led by example.’’
She taught students to “get up every day and paint, and don’t bow to obstacles. ‘If your back hurts, paint,’ and it will make you forget about the pain,’’ MacDonald said. “She painted through every problem in her life.’’
Ms. Farbush told the Globe in 1998 that Mexico and Hull were two of her favorite places to paint because of their colors.
“I paint on location,’’ she said. “I get tremendous stimuli from seeing.’’
Her daughter said Ms. Farbush was drawn to less-conventional subjects.
“ ‘Pretty’ didn’t interest her,’’ she said. “Cars that weren’t new and shiny, people who weren’t glamour models, that’s what interested her.’’
In 1951, Ms. Farbush married Donald Whittemore, whom she had met at a party. He died in 1974.
In 1983, she married musician Marvin Raffe, who died in the late 1990s, according to public records.
Years before it was common to do so, Ms. Farbush used her maiden name.
“I decided I was Farbush,’’ she said in 1998. “I am Farbush.’’
In addition to her daughter, Ms. Farbush leaves two grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Friday in the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset. Family and friends have asked those who attend to wear purple instead of the traditional black, which Ms. Farbush would have appreciated.
“She lived her life painting most every day with an enthusiasm that was not bound by years,’’ Rizzotto said. “Ros was a dynamic individual who saw and then depicted the world in bold shapes and vibrant colors. She found joy in her art.’’
Kathleen McKenna can be reached at kmck66@comcast.net.