Drawing as Daily Ritual: Artist Statement

My practice of devoting time everyday to drawing is informed by my experiences as an art historian, critic, and curator.  The process of drawing spontaneously, commonly known as automatism, intrigued me while I was a graduate student in art history at Harvard University.  Through my studies I became deeply familiar with the art of the Surrealist Roberto Matta Echaurren and the Abstract Expressionists William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock. As part of my research I interviewed Ethel Baziotes (the artist’s widow), Lee Krasner (Pollock’s wife and a major artist in her own right), Motherwell, and the British-born Surrealist Gordon Onslow-Ford. During my forty year career as a museum curator, I met numerous artists who influenced me; foremost among them Martha Alf, Claire Falkenstein, and Al Held.  I saw the work of so many others as well, such as Ross Bleckner, Fred Tomaselli, and John Torreano, whose imagery inspired me greatly.  

My artistic inclinations were also cultivated by my late mother, Ruth Rubin.  When I was a UCLA student in the early 1970s, she founded a needlepoint store in Tarzana, CA and hired me as artist-in-residence.  In that capacity, I designed Judaica, commissions such as dog portraits, and my own compositions.             

My stylistic vocabulary developed in the early 2000s, when I was serving as Curator of Visual Arts at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans.  Prior to Hurricane Katrina, my life revolved around a very loving community of visual artists, one of whom bought me a sketchbook with better paper than I had been working on.  It was at that point that I got serious about my art, and made drawing an ongoing practice.  I was fascinated by the culture and beauty of Mardi Gras beads, which were traditionally placed at grave sites to ward off evil spirits.  When I draw small circles repetitively I feel as though I am stringing beads through the universe, moving along different trajectories and interweaving them.  I also recognize the connection to my mother’s needlepoint, which involves working module-to-module.  Ultimately, I believe that my process is a mechanism for daily communing with the cosmos.

According to the philosopher Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), “Only he who possesses a personal religion, an original view of infinity, can be an artist.”  I consider my drawn worlds to be representations of the idea that divinity is everywhere, a concept that was validated for me by the poet Allen Ginsberg’s exclamation that “everything is holy” and the artist Wallace Berman’s credo that “Art is Love is God.”  My allover matrices can be considered unions of scientific and spiritual interpretations of the universe, in that they join together the concepts that everything is energy and everything is divine.  I call the new drawings “Pearls of Wisdom” because I consider the human quest for knowledge to be among the noblest undertakings that we instinctively pursue.  

The daily date drawings were inspired by the date paintings of On Kawara. They began as an activity that I would enjoy during periodic vacations in Amsterdam, where I would draw everyday in the cafes.  After my return to Los Angeles following forty years of working at museums, contemporary art centers, and college galleries, I decided to make this an ongoing practice, only working from home.  The photographic tableaus, which I post daily on Instagram, were inspired by a similar project undertaken by the late Martha Alf, who would photograph and post daily arrangements of fruits and flowers.  To view my Instagram postings please visit @davidsrubinart.