We were lucky to catch up with Maxine Schreiber recently and have shared our conversation below.
Maxine, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?
I have been creative since early childhood and always hoped to be a professional artist though my initial aspirations were to be a movie star. I had photos of movie stars all over one of my bedroom walls and hoped to be one of them. I spent my freshman year of college as an acting major at Emerson College in Boston. Not being a very talented actress, I dropped out of Emerson and spent a year on a kibbutz in Israel while I worked out what direction to take for my future. I brought an oil painting kit with me, and though I ended up doing very little painting there, I did do a lot of sketching. When I returned to the States, I switched my major to fine arts. My dad was a fabulous artist and a professional trumpet player. He did many jobs to support our family but he was always an artist and musician first and last. After his retirement as an optician, he painted for many years and won innumerable awards. My mom, who played the piano, never considered herself an artist but she always supported my endeavors. Both of them were major influences. It was my dad who taught me how to draw, paint and to look at art with reverence and respect. It was my mom who encouraged me to believe in myself and always follow my dreams.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Primarily a landscape painter, for the past nearly 20 years I have been painting and exhibiting my work through organizations such as Women In The Visual Arts, National Association of Women Artists, and the Artists of Palm Beach County. I have been represented by a number of galleries over the years, and I have sold work through the organizations, galleries, and my website www.schreiberstudio.com. I’ve also been writing throughout the years and at one time I was a columnist for the Indian River Art News, BestofArtists.com and Examiner.com. In addition to exhibiting and selling my work I enjoyed writing about the fabulous local art scene and I published about 200 articles. However, one of my proudest accomplishments was writing, illustrating, and self-publishing The Story of Daphne the Duck, a children’s picture book. I was delighted that it offered me the opportunity to express myself as both an illustrator and a writer. The book remains available on Amazon. I’m currently working on another picture book, POOL CATS, which I am hoping will be published in the near future.
Have you ever had to pivot?
I received a B.A. in Fine Arts Education from Newark State College (now Kean University) in New Jersey in 1969. I did my student teaching in a middle school but realized quickly that I didn’t want to teach. Still, I didn’t know how I would earn a living painting. I ended up moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts where I did enjoy painting and teaching oil painting in an adult education program; but I could hardly live on my earnings so I went on to get a Masters Degree in Expressive Therapies from Lesley University. I put painting aside to practice as a psychotherapist for nearly 30 years. The last 16 of those years I spent in my own private practice in West Palm Beach.
But in 2001 after about 15 years of not painting, I realized how much I missed it and started making art again. I would work all day seeing clients in my office and then paint at night often till three in the morning. Then I’d go to sleep and start all over again. Or sometimes I would paint in the morning before going in to the office. Either way the painting started to compete with my working hours and in 2005, I closed my practice to follow my passion and became a full-time artist/writer.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
When I was young, one summer I spent some time in Holland. I don’t know if it’s still true but at that time the Dutch government paid artists to do their art. I learned this from a young man I met who was an artist, and he received a stipend from the government that had allowed him to paint for years. Being an artist was his full-time job. While I know there are grants, fellowships, and endowments that artists can pursue in the States, most are highly competitive. I read somewhere that only about 10% of art school graduates make a living from their artwork. If I had my way, our government would function more like it did in the Netherlands. Our society would value art and artists more and would make sure that there was no such thing as a starving artist. The recent strike in Hollywood is evidence that artists are not valued as much as I believe they should be. Greed, wealth, and corporations seem to be what is valued rather than a creative ecosystem.
A part of me wishes I had started my creative career earlier. I think sometimes if only I had studied commercial art rather than fine art I would have had a career in the arts throughout my adulthood. I wouldn’t have had to teach or gone for a Masters Degree and would have been doing artwork all of those years. Still, I don’t regret the years I spent being a mental health professional. I know that I helped a great number of people and I found the work extremely rewarding. But I wonder what it would have been like to have been an art director for an advertising agency or perhaps even better an animator for the Disney Corporation. Or if I had stayed at Emerson, perhaps I would have gotten into set design or playwriting. Supporting oneself as an artist is not easy, but I am just very glad for the years I’ve had being an artist.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.schreiberstudio.com
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sXOL_X65Rc&t=3s
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/Story-Daphne-Duck-Maxine-Schreiber/dp/1496148762/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400845973&sr=1-1&keywords=maxine+schreiber