Studio Art Workshops 2009

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.

“Books Pile XXVII” featured on the cover of American Arts Quarterly.

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.

Silverpoint Drawings at the Evansville Museum

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.

Books Paintings at Hidell Brooks Gallery

Ephraim will participate in Hidell Brooks Gallery’s annual summer Introductions exhibition, a show highlighting artists new to the gallery. Ephraim will exhibit five of his ‘Books’ still life paintings.

“Introductions: Annual Group Summer Exhibition”
Hidell Brooks Gallery
Charlotte , North Carolina
July 10- August 29, 2009.

Scott Noel article in American Artist

Ephraim has written a feature article on Philadelphia painter Scott Noel. The article explores Scott’s tremendous accomplishments in figure painting, still life, interiors and cityscape. For those of you living near Philadelphia and looking for a painting or drawing class, Scott is also a renowned teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy School .

“Studio as Setting; The Paintings of Scott Noel”
May, 2009 American Artist Magazine