Artist Statement
March 2024
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Cheryl Rubin is a painter working with the energy of gesture, color and form to explore visual expressions of beauty and meaning. Searching for rhythms, harmony and movement across the canvas, Cheryl’s paintings show her process of visual investigation through additive and subtractive layers of gestural drawing, action painting and mono printing. Her paintings reveal the result of the battle between observation, intuition and excavation as she works to bring a unique visual world into existence.
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Cheryl's most recent paintings explore sound waves as a platform for visual investigation. Painting energetically to music, she uses rhythms and sounds to direct her drawing and gestural motions.
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Her painting process includes a connection to her late father's career in the printing industry. In addition to drawing and brushwork, she often pours 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 her to create dynamic shapes with texture and an organic edge that provides an additional vitality to the painting.
Biography
Cheryl’s paintings is a painter working with the energy of gesture, color and form to explore visual expressions of beauty and meaning. She grew up outside of Philadelphia in a house with a floor to ceiling wall mural of the 1928 Stuart Davis painting, "Place Pasdeloup", meticulously copied by her father and brother from a postcard. Cheryl loved that wall mural – the harmony of flat colors, line work, and the magical space created on a 2D surface transported her every time she looked at it. She began drawing and painting in high school and found a love of creating with clay after watching a potter spin magic on a pottery wheel. During Cheryl's senior year in high school, she became the first high school intern in the ceramics department at Cheltenham Arts Centre. After two years studying painting and drawing at Kansas City Art Institute, Cheryl transferred to Philadelphia College of Art (now called University of the Arts) graduating with a BFA in Sculpture. Moving to New York City in 1979 she continued to create both 2D and 3D art while raising a daughter with her husband, musician and author Dave Rubin, as well as working in brand and creative management for Macy’s and Warner Discovery’s DC Entertainment. After taking early retirement in 2011, Cheryl devoted herself to rebuilding her art practice full-time and currently has a studio in the NoMad district of New York City.
Exhibitions
The Marciano Law Firm, Hoboken, NJ solo show of three paintings May 1, 2023 - June 15, 2023
Primavera, One Brooklyn Bridge Park Juried Group Show, April 1 – June 18, 2021
First Street Gallery, 9 for 19 Juried Group Show, Chelsea, NY, January 2021
ArtspeakCollective.org Group Show, “Art in the Aftermath”, December 2020 online exhibition
Art Students League of NY, Merit Winners Exhibition, September 2020 – October 2020
Tabla Rasa Gallery, Brooklyn, NYC, 1stdibs.com, November 2020 - present
DeFrate & Paavola, Solo Show, Ed Sullivan Office Theatre Building, NYC (February 5, 2020 – May 2022)
Goddard Riverside Community Center Group Show, NYC (March 2020)
Manhattan Borough President’s Office Juried Group Show (July- September 2018)
Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, 57th St., NYC (2018/2019/2020) Group Shows Spring Spring Studio, NYC, Solo Show – Recent Drawings & Collages (March 2015)
Spring Studio, NYC, Group Shows (2010-2015)
Philadelphia Bicentennial Art Exhibition (1976)
Global Art Students Exposition, Glasgow, Scotland (1974)


Awards
Phyllis Harriman Gallery 57th St., NYC Honorable Mention (2020)
Art Students League Peter Helk Award (2019)
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Education
Kansas City Art Institute/Philadelphia College of Art BFA (1977)
Continuing Studies (1990- present)
Art Students League
Spring Studio/Minerva’s Drawing Studio
Greenwich House Pottery
School of Visual Arts
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Professional Career
President, Cheryl Rubin Group/Powerhouse Branding (2011-2015)
Senior Vice President, Brand Management Warner Discovery/DC Entertainment (1987-2010)
Marketing Manager, Annual Events, Macy’s New York (1981-1986)
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