by steven friedman
correspondent
Lillian Rubin deftly wedged a lot of life into her first 80 years. The San Francisco resident is a mother, wife, activist, political campaign director, therapist and author — tackling each pursuit with her signature boldness and high energy.
For the past four years, Rubin has nourished her meditative spirit, a part of her that always bubbled below the surface, and become an artist.
“My writing is direct, forceful, assertive — no hiding behind phrases to obscure or diminish the power of my thoughts or feelings,” said the 84-year-old author of 13 books, including “Worlds of Pain,” a major college text about the working class, and “Sixty on Up,” a book she says tells the truth about aging in America.
“Yet the paintings present another face — a side that seeks to step away from the reality my words portray and into a less turbulent, more contemplative place where shape and color form the text in which the imagination can wander into heretofore unknown places.”
Rubin’s paintings have an ethereal, dreamy quality that makes them appear muted and subdued. Her immediate goal is to find her artistic voice, the way she has as a writer, activist, psychologist, spouse and parent.
“I had never held a paintbrush before I took my first painting lesson in August 2004, and have had about 40 hours of instruction since then,” said Rubin, who became a freshman at U.C. Berkeley when she was 39. “I’m not studying right now, because an artist I respect has urged me to ‘just paint’ — scary advice that also seems just right.”
Lately, “just painting” has paid off for Rubin. Her artwork was shown at the Bank of America in Mill Valley last summer, and it drew the attention of Angar Mora, who has been featuring artists at Arrivederci Café in San Rafael for 10 years.
“I believe people are more important than objects,” said Mora, who was drawn to Rubin as a person first, an artist second. She will display Rubin’s paintings at a show and salon in May at the café. “Art is about changing perspectives, engaging people and being willing to move them. My judgment is that Lillian Rubin likes people, and her paintings will interest our patrons and the community.”
Rubin’s life journey has been arduous at times. She was raised by a single working-class mother, who was widowed when Rubin was young and toiled in the nonunionized clothing industry. Her mother’s struggle left an indelible impression on Rubin; she witnessed how garment workers earned their rights through collective action.
She drew on her mother’s experiences and wisdom years later when she found herself divorced and a single mother in 1960. Aided by her exposure to early union organizing, she began managing political campaigns for liberal congressional candidates. Her dream was to become a civil liberties lawyer.
“In college I became interested in social change,” said Rubin, who protested the Vietnam War and was jailed with her daughter when they were both in college in the late ’60s. “So I earned a license to become a psychologist.”
She spent 35 years as a therapist, helping people come to terms with and transcend their often brutal pasts. But she couldn’t ignore the inner yearnings to paint that had been glowing inside her since she first visited New York City’s Museum of Metropolitan Art in the early 1930s.
“After I read Betty Edwards’ ‘Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain,’ I took the first giant step in changing my life,” said Rubin, who feels the modest sales of her artwork legitimizes her as an artist.
She paints three to four times a week at a studio in San Francisco where she is by far the oldest among 37 other artists. She thinks her paintings are all over the map, but “suggest a more quietly reflective person than I am.”
That inner rumination has probably helped explain her renewed interest in Jewish culture and holidays since her mother’s death several years ago.
“I have always been Jewish in my soul,” she explained. “But I’ve also been a secular atheist and turned off by the hypocrisy and contradictions of supposedly observant Jews. I was pissed off that my mother and I,” who were indigent, “were charged money to attend shul during the High Holy Days.”
But her mother’s death has led Rubin to celebrate Chanukah in a fairly traditional manner each year. She also hosts a Passover seder, largely for her great-grandson, who is 6.
A few years ago, while in New York City, she went on an afternoon walk with her husband during the High Holy Days. They passed a synagogue and were invited to sit in the balcony. The choir sang such gorgeous and mournful melodies, Rubin said.
“If I had had this kind of background when I was younger, I could believe.”
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California