We were lucky to catch up with Cheryl Rubin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Cheryl, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I have no regrets but I do wish in retrospect I had figured out a better way to have a more than full time job, raise a daughter and pursue my art on a more regular basis than I did. After graduating with a BFA in Sculpture from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, I started working in visual merchandising retailers like Wanamaker’s and Macy’s, following the path of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg who did similar work early in their career. That led to a position at Macy’s Annual Events, where I was the Marketing Manager for all of Macy’s annual events including the Thanksgiving Day Parade. From Macy’s, I went to DC Comics, where I stayed for 24 years, eventually becoming Senior Vice President, Brand Management for DC”s iconic properties such as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. During all these positions, I raised my daughter with my husband, music journalist and teacher Dave Rubin and pursued life drawing as well as ceramic sculptures. I am glad I was able to keep my hands and brain artistically active but not in the way needed to pursue my artistic practice more seriously I had to wait until I took early retirement in 2011 to begin pursuing my art on a full time basis and then it took me several years to regain my focus and start to rebuild my portfolio. I am pleased with how my work has evolved to this point and can only wonder how far my work would have evolved even further if I had been able to pursue it on a more full time basis.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am an artist currently exploring natural and organic forms with acrylic paint on canvas and paper utilizing a gestural abstraction style of painting to discover the unknown. With rhythmic gestures, color harmony and energetic movements across the canvas, my paintings show the process of visual investigation through additive and subtractive layers of drawing, action painting and mono printing. My paintings reveal the result of the battle between observation, intuition and excavation as I work to bring a unique visual world into existence.

​My painting process includes a connection to my late father’s career in the printing industry. In addition to drawing and brushwork, I often pour fluid paint onto both flat and textured substrates, pressing the imagery into the painting. Challenged to create the image in reverse before pressing, the process enables me to create dynamic shapes with texture and an organic edge that provides an additional vitality to the painting. 

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Fund the arts!!! It is so critical for everyone to have access to experiencing as well as expressing themselves through the arts. I love that more and museums are reaching out into the communities they serve with new interactive programs for kids and teens as well as for adults. Experiencing art in a museum is more than educational – it not only opens a person’s eyes and mind to a world beyond their own life, it can be spiritually up lifting and psychologically healing. More music, more dance, more painting for everyone of all ages to experience. Funding the arts is critical to our understanding of ourselves and others. Exploring one’s own creativity as well as learning to appreciate what other people are creating expands the mind and nurtures the soul. The arts enable people to live a more joyful life. And creative thinkers can help change the world for the better.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I don’t think non-creatives have a sense of how much work is involved in creating art. Whether it is a painting, a musical composition, or a dance, just to name a few creative activities, there is much preparation and time put into a work before anyone ever sees it. A creative person has to always be “on”, thinking about and looking at the world we live in and how to interpret it in an interesting and skillful way. This take time! It often takes years of preparation and dedicated hard work to get to the point where the work you present to the world is successful. It usually looks easy to the person viewing it but creatives know the time, the struggles, the practice, the experiments, the self questioning, and the work that is thrown away or redone before anyone else ever sees the finished piece.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cherylrubin.com
• Instagram: @cherylrubin
• Facebook: Cheryl Rubin
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylrubin

Image Credits

All images ©Cheryl Rubin