Ephraim Rubenstein : news

The following is a list of specialized studio art workshops that Ephraim will be offering this year through The Art Students League of New York. Class sizes will be limited.

Studio 6 Workshop in Color Spot Oil Painting
Week 1: Monday–Friday, March 1–5, 8:45 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Week 2: Monday–Friday, March 8–12, 8:45 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
(Instructor present each day)

Color spot oil painting is a method of direct painting developed in the early decades of the twentieth century by Charles Hawthorne and later by his student and assistant, Edwin Dickinson. Although aspects of color spot painting go all the way back to Baroque painting, Hawthorne and Dickinson were the first to organize entire canvases and elaborate compositions by means of the color spot.

A color spot is a piece of color, large or small, that has been observed and abstracted from the appearance of nature and applied directly to the white canvas in discrete notes. Color spot painting is as direct a method as exists––you aim to hit the mark right at first, and not go back (or go back as little as possible) so as not to destroy the integrity of the network of spots.

This workshop will provide an intensive introduction to color spot painting, emphasizing the role of the viewfinder, the plumb line, the relationship between the object and its environment, and how to set up the initial key of the painting.

Florence Workshop
April 23rd – May 8th, 2010

For the fourth year in a row, the Art Students League is sponsoring two-week workshops in Florence, Italy. This year’s trip runs April 23 to May 8, and Ephraim Rubenstein will be leading a workshop.

Students on the trip share comfortable, fully-furnished apartments with kitchens, provided by the League’s partner: Studio Art Centers International (SACI) in Florence. Days mix classes in SACI’s well-equipped studios, outdoor work, trips to museums, independent excursions, and the freedom to experience the beautiful birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and the home of a vibrant contemporary art scene.

In Florence, art is not only in the museums – it is out in the streets. Considered by many to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Florence was made famous by the buildings, paintings and sculptures by artists such as Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Giotto.

Come study and work in the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. We will paint in the streets, the gardens and along the Arno, and visit the churches, museums, and collections that house some of the greatest artworks in the West.

Plein Air Landscape Painting
Section 1: Monday–Friday, June 14–18, 8:45 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Section 2: Monday–Friday, August 2–6, 8:45 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Fee per section: $400 (5 sessions). Fee for both sections: $750 (10 session)

This workshop will provide training in direct plein-air landscape painting utilizing various areas in Central Park as a location. The workshop will be open to both beginning students who have never worked outside before, and also to more advanced students who wish to refine their plein-air handling. The course will address such issues as the difference between direct and indirect approaches to oil painting in the landscape, topographical versus atmospheric emphasis, and the notion of space composition. The class will offer practice in handling changing light and weather conditions as well. Students must have a folding French easel, or something similar.

Ephraim’s work will be included in a new exhibition exploring the human form in contemporary painting this month at the Studio 7 Gallery in Bernardsville, NJ. Please join us for an opening reception on Friday, February 5th, from 6-9 p.m.

The following is a list of specialized studio art workshops that Ephraim will be offering this year through The Art Students League of New York. Class sizes will be limited.

Drawing for Beginners
September 24-25, 2009
Thursday & Friday, 8:45AM -12:30PM (Instructor present each day)
$175

This concentrated, two-day workshop offers the absolute basics for getting started in drawing. It will cover topics such as; basic materials, proportion, lighting, and space. It is geared for people who have little or no experience with drawing and want to get started in a relaxed, non-pressured setting.

Oil Painting Fundamentals
September 10-11, 2009
Thursday & Friday, 8:45AM-12:30 PM (Instructor present each day)
$175

This focused two day workshop offers an in depth review of the absolute basics necessary for getting started in oil painting. It will cover such topics as materials, setting-up the palette, basic color theory and color mixing and the various approaches to starting a painting (direct vs. indirect painting). This workshop should give students all the practical information they need inorder to feel comfortable in a regular studio painting class.

Seminar in the Literature of Art
Section 1: September 17th – December 17th, 2009
Section 2: January 14th – May 20th, 2010
4:45- 6:30
$265

This seminar will examine selected landmarks in the history of writing about art. It will include works of theory, criticism, connoisseurship and the writings of artists themselves. Readings will come from Plato, Aristotle, Heinrich Wolfflin, Bernard Berenson, Virginia Woolf, Van Gogh and Rilke, among others. The seminar will meet for ten sessions on Thursday afternoons beginning January 8, 2009.

Ephraim’s recent exhibit at the George Billis Gallery is reviewed in the Spring 2009 edition of American Arts Quarterly, and the painting “Books Pile XXVII” is featured on the issue’s cover.

The review, excerpted below, can be read in its entirety here.

We of a certain generation are haunted by old books, lumbered with them, dependent upon them, fed up with them, in love with them. They furnish a room. Decorators buy them by the yard to fill a wall of shelves, libraries de-accession them, hardly anybody can destroy them. (Once in a while they have been burnt, but only because of what the words inside said.) That old problem remains of what to do with the old books? Pass them on, sell, donate, but don’t destroy. Ephraim Rubenstein paints them; in fact, he buys them in order to paint them. His long-thought-out arrangements of the books to one another, like Cézanne’s apples and pears, achieve a dialogue—formally, rhythmically. These books are not in fine bindings but bound in buckram or paper, some water-damaged, with broken spines or flapping labels, or are disbound completely, their contents most likely obsolete.

All paintings in the exhibition were oil on linen, with the exception of one pastel on paper. Their subject, colorful but faded old books, is set, in most cases, against a velvety black background. Skillful chiaroscuro indicates the influence on this contemporary realist of old masters such as Caravaggio and Manet. The paintings (all 2008) range in dimension from 10-by-8 inches to 48-by-72 inches, so that even the largest of the group achieves an intimacy that invites closer scrutiny. In Books: Pile XXVII (cover), for example, the way the glossy thick brushstrokes create the illusion of fore-edge and top-edge, reflecting ambient light, is seductive; we could almost reach into the painting and open this book. All these paintings play with the viewer’s expectations. The books, so skillfully painted as to draw us closer, only to discover blurred titles and text that cannot be read, are stacked so that we must view certain “piles” from various perspectives (from below or above or head-on). And the relation of a book pile to its picture plane—to its two-dimensional surface, as well as to the confines of its dimensions—is witty. None of Rubenstein’s paintings is to be viewed without a closer look, a suspicious look.

Read more.

Ephraim will have two silverpoint drawings in a museum exhibition of contemporary metalpoint drawings at the Evansville Museum in Evansville, Indiana. Favored by Renaissance artists such as Fillipo Lippi, Perugino and Leonardo, metalpoint drawings continue to captivate many contemporary drawers with its delicate linearity. Ephraim will exhibit a life-size drawing of a Narcissus flower, as well as four portrait studies of his friend, David Dodge Lewis.

“The Luster of Silver: Contemporary Metalpoint Drawings”
The Evansville Museum
Evansville , Indiana
June 26- September 13, 2009.