Ilene rubin
by Michele Malinchak
Aristotle coined the phrase: “Nature abhors a vacuum,” meaning that every space in nature needs to be filled with something. For most of her life, artist Ilene Rubin has attempted to fill those empty spaces with paint. According to her, almost anything with a paintable surface is fair game. Though she began by decorating objects, she is best known today for her paintings, especially her landscapes.
As a girl she’d paint things around her parents’ home like the mailbox, an old radiator and her closet doors. Later on at college she painted a mural on someone’s dorm room wall which, she said, “I got in trouble for.” The mural stayed up until the end of the semester when she was told to remove it.
Ilene then painted designs on clothing, boots, purses and furniture in different motifs ranging from folk art to landscapes. And while she still paints objects, her primary focus has shifted to painting landscapes in a variety of mediums. For the past 14 years she’s devoted herself to preserving rapidly vanishing scenes due to development and natural decline.
“I want to feel that I’m there in the painting and that others can walk into it even if the place is no longer there, almost like a dream.” One of her paintings featured Lock #11 on the Delaware Canal in New Hope, PA. Though the canal looks different now, she can still visualize the scene and the two swans that once glided across the water.
Her style, which she describes as representational/interpretive, varies depending on what she is painting. A former teacher once said to her, “You are two different artists—you have to decide which one you are.” To which she replied: “No, I don’t.”
“I do lean toward impressionism more than photo realism but in all things, the magnet is texture and color. Beauty is everywhere and I see details and texture in everything. The details pop out and I try to capture them.” Her intention is not to copy every brick in a building, but rather to create a visual story about what she wants to convey. She will ask herself, “Have I said everything I wanted to about that scene?”
She doesn’t want to paint with her eyes so much as her heart. “Art is an emotional response,” she said, as she put a hand over her heart. “Look at that chair over there, how the light is bouncing off the metal or the coffee cup on this table. You can give anything dignity and respect by painting it. Every painting is a love affair.”
The transition from painting objects to creating fine art happened gradually. “I lacked the skill set,” she said. Primarily self-taught, she learned from books, teachers and her peers.
In 2007 while living in Boulder, CO, Ilene decided to take art lessons when she had difficulty finding work. Her teacher, Lillian Kennedy, became her mentor and the classes provided a valuable social outlet. From that time on, painting became a full-time hobby.
“I learned by first copying a Redfield painting, but Lillian stressed the importance of becoming my own artist.” Ilene started out painting with acrylics and then learned pastels, watercolors and oils. “It took a lot of patience and tenacity,” she said.
Even more influential than her mentor was Ilene’s husband, Mitch, who encouraged her to develop her talent into something greater.
“When he gave me the first set of paints, and then again, a few years later my first set of pastels, his knowing comment was, ‘See what you can do with these.’ That made all the difference in taking me from a place where I doodled on walls and radiators and challenged me to put my creative energy onto canvas.”
Ilene works primarily in her studio but spends a great deal of time studying sites she plans to paint. Due to allergies, plein air painting is not an option. “Susceptible to the environment, my window for painting outdoors is in the 65-74 degree range,” she said.
Instead, she does what she calls “pseudo plein air.” This involves sitting outdoors for an hour and a half or more, studying the light and making decisions about what’s important in the composition. She then takes lots of photos for reference.
Before painting she does sketches and value studies, often printing a black and white photo of the scene. Somehow, she knows how her paintings will turn out in the end, but to keep her on track she takes photos of her work as she goes along. “It helps me check my progress and keeps me accountable.”
Born in Philadelphia, Ilene grew up in Elkins Park and entered her first art contest when she was nine. A newspaper sponsored the contest in which contestants had to draw the profile of a dog’s head. She remembers how excited she was to receive her winning prize in the mail—her very own sketchbook.
Later she attended Cheltenham High School where she took mainly academic classes. “I was always good at English and art,” she said. Her parents, however, wanted her to choose a field that offered a practical way to earn a living. She settled on Philadelphia College of Textiles and Sciences where she studied textile design and retail management.
While attending college she worked at department stores like Strawbridge & Clothier and Lord & Taylor building her experience in retail sales.
Graduating with a B.S. degree in retail management and a minor in textile design, she worked as forecaster and allocator of sales at Guitar Center, the Walking Company and Harbor Freight Tools. In addition she became department manager at Strawbridge & Clothier and Lord & Taylor.
As well as being an artist, Ilene has written four novels, a screenplay and three children’s stories. She began writing when her two children were little and she enjoyed delving into research while being creative.
In the 90s, she lived in Thousand Oaks, CA and took courses at UCLA Writer’s Extension Program in Los Angeles and was a guest columnist for The Thousand Oaks Star.
Her novels are all murder mysteries and/or psychological dramas. “As the River Flows” and “Reason to Kill” are self-published and available on Amazon and CreateSpace.com. Her other two books are currently in the editing stage.
The idea for “As the River Flows” came about when she got lost one night. At the time she was working as a manager for Tupperware and was trying to find someone’s home in the days before GPS. It was a dark, foggy evening and she ended up in a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. Memories of that event were used to lay the groundwork for the story.
Ilene’s a night owl and paints and writes between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. “I’ve always been very family oriented,” she said, “and didn’t want to disturb them by painting during the day. Children and home have always come first.” Though her children are grown now and she has three grandchildren, she still keeps those late hours.
Since moving back to PA in 2008 from Boulder, she has studied with Bucks County artists including John Murdoch, George Thompson, Betty Minnucci, Dot Bunn and Philadelphia based Patrick Connors.
Artists who inspire her include John Constable, Jean-Baptise-Camille Corot, Joaquin Sorolla, and Vincent Van Gogh. Contemporary artists include Andrew Tischler, Jos Van Riswick and Michael James Smith.
Ilene is affiliated with several art groups including: Doylestown Art League, Artists of Bristol on the Delaware, Artists of Yardley, New Hope Art League, Artsbridge, Abington Art Center and Arts and Cultural Council of Bucks County. She served as vice president of the New Hope Art League from 2014 to 2016 and co-founded a group called Broads with Brushes that offered local artists the opportunity to show their work.
Recently two of her oil paintings have won awards: “Moonlight Sonata” at the Artsbridge Member 2021 Spring Show and “Rushing Water” at the Bucks Fever 2020 Art Exhibition and Sculpture Show.
Ilene was one of the featured artists in this year’s Bucks County Chamber of Commerce’s Art Studio Tour held in May. The tour will also be presented as a virtual event free for anyone to view.
This fall she and artist Kathleen McSherry will be in a joint show at Stover Mill Gallery, Erwinna, PA. Called, “Pieces and Places of Bucks County,” the show will run September 4-26. Also this fall she will be in the virtual 7th Annual Points of View Show at the Laceworks in Lambertville, NJ.
Though she’s come far in her journey, she said, “I never feel like an expert and still have a lot to learn and explore.”
Ilene’s work is represented by Off the Wall Framing and Gallery in Skippack, PA and is also available for purchase on her website: www.ilenerubin.com.