He spends his summers in Austria, Bavaria and Italy teaching young artists the techniques of the old masters, but recently PHILIP RUBINOV-JACOBSON has settled in Little Forest Hills. His style of fantastic realism, which he describes as “painting from the spiritual imagination,” is featured in exhibits from Houston to Holland, and he says his method — using oil and egg tempera (egg yolk and water mixed with dry pigments) — fits any artistic approach.
Why oil and egg tempera?
It’s like painting with stained glass. We start in the dark and move toward light, so there are all these spiritual metaphors. Other artists start with a white canvas, and they’re trying to get light, shade, form, perspective, atmosphere, movement, non-movement all at once, just with color. That is very difficult. The old masters’ method is a division of labor. All the form and light and shade are done in the under-painting.
How does that work?
You start with an earth color [canvas], a red or a brown, then with white egg tempera diluted with water, you create your form in monochromatic schemes — so white on red or white on brown — then the oil glazes come later. The glazes are transparent sheets of color overlay, and the form comes right through it. It seems so new, but really it’s 600 years old.
Where did you learn this?
When I was 19, I went to Vienna to study with a master artist, Ernst Fuchs. The first day that I was studying, I had arrived early and started painting and, in typical fashion, was a mess with paint all over me. He said, “Look at you. If you begin with chaos, you’re going to paint chaos. Don’t come back unless you’re serious about becoming an artist.” I had traveled across the ocean and had $50 in my pocket, but I went away, thought about it and came back. I stayed there two years as his apprentice. He brought into focus my life’s vision. Now I return every year to Austria carrying his knowledge and teaching the old masters’ knowledge of painting for a contemporary vision.
What does it mean to paint from the imagination?
I don’t paint what I know already. I paint the questions, and when painting the questions, the answers come. Painting the questions makes the painting more mysterious, and people seem to enjoy that. Art should be a dialogue. It’s America that’s very into statements, and we need statements, too, but we have to continue to ask questions.
Is that what you feel is lacking in today’s art?
Something is going on. People are getting tired of walking in the front door of museums then walking out the exit and feeling drained and tired instead of enlivened and inspired. It’s a later 20th century phenomenon — faddish and trendy art. If I walk into a room and there’s broken bottles on the floor and toilet paper in the corner, I don’t really feel anything, sorry. And it’s not because I’m unintelligent. The fact is the art is naked, it’s vacant of feeling, and people are starting to wake up to that. If art doesn’t move you, then it’s probably not art, and you can trust that feeling. Through my exhibits, my lectures, my books, I’m putting a kind-of wake up call out, not to say that this is bad or this is good, but for people to trust themselves again.
For more information: rubinovs-lightning.com
