We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Robert Newman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Robert below.
Hi Robert, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
One of the biggest risks I’ve taken to date has been leaving my job on Wall Street, to pursue my art career full-time. I moved to New York City in the summer of 2014 to start my full-time professional services career at Morgan Stanley as a financial analyst. Although I’ve been an artist and creative for most of my life, I studied business administration in college, so getting a job at one of the top investment banks in the world was a dream come true. After spending the first 4.5 years progressing through various positions at the company, I transitioned into a new finance role at Neuberger Berman. Neuberger Berman seemed to be godsent because it’s an employee-owned, boutique asset management firm, that was started by Roy Neuberger – one of the cornerstones of the contemporary American art scene. I thought that surely being in a place that used my business acumen AND had a deep history of supporting the arts would be the perfect venue for a polymath like myself. But after spending another 4 years working there, I realized that the only way to make my art shine fully was to commit to the task. So in August of 2022, I took my leap of faith.
Robert, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Robert L. Newman III and I am a 2014 Morehouse College graduate working as an Artist and Entrepreneur based in Harlem, New York. Before working as a full-time artist, I worked as a Wall Street financial / business analyst for over 8 years. As a visual artist, I have exhibited work in galleries and museums nationally and internationally. In my free time I help to lead various community projects and arts-based non-profits, including my current role as a Board of Director Member for Americans for the Arts.
I began my artist journey when I was 4 years old in the front window of my grandmother’s doll shop. She is a self-taught porcelain doll maker and a supremely creative person. I have always tried to mimic her in my craft and creativity, but that is easier said than done as a toddler. To keep me busy, she purchased a weaving loom for me and the rest is history. What began as me learning how to weave and sell potholders in her shop window has evolved into my current disciplines of painting, photography, and curation.
My art portfolio is made up of expressionist portraits, mixed medium collage landscapes, and more. I mainly work in acrylic paint on canvas, but some of my more involved projects have been compared to sculptures for how I incorporate ‘found objects’ to create depth, texture, and added layers of complexity. The stories that I tell are typically focused on the Black community, notable historical figures and artists, and messages that are meant to inspire us as a people to achieve greater heights.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
One of the largest creative undertakings that I have worked on to date has been an expirement / campaign that I call The 10,000 Paintings Project. Although I feel that I was born as an artist, and have been exposed / trained in the arts since I was a child, I have never had a formal arts education. Growing up I also never considered what it would be like to have a full-time career as an artist. As the saying goes “you can’t be what you can’t see.”
In 2016, I was given my very first opportunity to present my work in a gallery at the City College of New York. I was overjoyed and in my heart felt like this was the turning point in my professional art career. But to my surprise, it was still nearly impossible for me to actually sell my artwork. The paintings that were featured in the gallery were priced at $200-400, but my audience was convinced that this was too expensive. It’s important to note that at this time I was also working full-time as a Wall Street Analyst at Morgan Stanley. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that I only learned finance / accounting / business in college (4 years of training) and that I could get paid 6 figures, but for something that I had been doing my whole life, I could barely get a dollar.
While I was holding this tension, I stumbled across the Suzan-Lori Parks’s “365 Days/365 Plays.” On November 13, 2002, Parks got an idea to write a play every day for a year. She began that very day, finishing one year later. The result is an extraordinary testament to artistic commitment. I was deeply moved by the idea and wanted to do the same with my work. But the more I thought about it, 1 year of painting seemed almost trite in the face of the work I had already done in my life. First, I consider 1,000 paintings, even this number seemed grand but not audacious enough. So I finally settled on 10,000 (inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s Outlier and the concept of 10,000 hours required to become a true master).
Similar to Parks, once the decision was made, I started at the task in December of 2016. But there were two problems with project: One what will I do with 10,000 works of art if I can’t even sell 1 AND Two, I broke my right hand a week after the project commenced.
The first problem vexed me for weeks until I had one of the most radical realizations of my life…..I DID NOT have to sell them. I had a job, I had a bed, and I had food in my stomach. Those were the only things that I have ever needed to be creative. I began to understand that with or without money or public acknowledgment I AM AN ARTIST. So I gave them all away. Every single one.
In order for me to overcome my second challenge, I took a step back from the art and disciplines that I knew and sought inspiration from sports. I remember watching an interview with Kobe Bryant where he spoke about his first year in NBA. He mentioned that although he felt like he was already on the path to greatness, he began to understand that greatness wasn’t about the circumstances being perfect. He began to train to make sure that regardless of how ideal the situation was, he made himself resilient enough to handle any and all circumstances. The mamba mentality was born. When I took this information and applied it back to painting, I realized yet again I AM AN ARTIST….not a right-handed artist. I remember thinking, what would I do if I lost an arm, would I still want to create? What if I lost a leg? What if I lost my sight? And on and on and on. The answer was a resounding yes. I will create with any and all means that are afforded to me regardless of the circumstances. I reframed my ‘handicap’ as an opportunity to strengthen my left hand. Because as Kobe would say, what type of player only knows how to play the game with one hand? The answer is, not a player worthy of being called the GOAT.
The project was officially completed in December of 2021.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Mastery by Robert Greene
As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
“Your Elusive Creative Genius” Ted Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Creative Process by James Baldwin
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rxbart.com
- Instagram: rxbart
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/robnewmaniii
- Twitter: robnewmaniii
- Youtube: rxbart
Image Credits
Photos w/ braids credit Yekaterina Gyadu Phots of artwork by myself