SCHLAM - CREATIVE PATH : views from the studio on the making of art.

THE
CREATIVE
PATH

Copyright 2018 by Carolyn Schlam

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Cover design by Mary Belibasakis

Painting, Alexandra in Bloom, by Carolyn Schlam

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schlam, Carolyn Dobkin, 1947

Title: The creative path: a view from the studio on the making of art / Carolyn Dobkin Schlam.

Description: New York: Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017058789 (print) | LCCN 2017058985 (ebook) | ISBN 9781621536673 (ebook) | ISBN 9781621536666 (pbk.: alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: ArtistsPsychology. | Creative ability.

Classification: LCC N71 (ebook) | LCC N71 .S356 2018 (print) | DDC 700.1/9dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017058789

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-62153-666-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62153-667-3

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my teacher, Norman Raeben. I thank him and all the wonderful souls who have touched me and helped me in my journey as an artist. In particular I thank my sister, Rebecca Katechis, who has listened to endless stories and dreams, offering a gentle and wise counterbalance, my beautiful niece Alexandra, whose soulful spirit is my muse, and my goddaughter Erica, who has ultimate faith in me, no matter what. I honor my beloved parents, Anne and Sam Dobkin, my sister Eleanor Toby, and my charming nephew Aaron, all of whom nurtured the seeds that have flowered in my art and in this book. I am indebted to them all.

Everyone has talent, but not everyone has rags.

Norman Raeben

What we need is more sense of the wonder of life and less of this business of making a picture.

Robert Henri

CONTENTS

NORMAN RAEBENS LECTURES, WITH COMMENTARY
BY CAROLYN SCHLAM

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

I am a visual artist and have been practicing for more than forty years. The seed of my passion for art was planted before I was born and came into manifestation very early. My mother would boast that she could calm me in my crib with a magazine. I could entertain myself by flipping through the pages, my fascination with pictures absorbing me even then.

When I was fifteen, I drew a Mother and Child for my mothers birthday by clutching a teddy bear to myself in front of a mirror while drawing with the other hand. This picture was something she treasured, and when she passed, I took it back and hung it on my own wall. I look at it today in awe at my unconscious self that was able to create such a sensitive image out of the pure desire to please someone I loved. How hard I have worked since then to recapture the potency and authenticity of that image!

Creative people are born with a need to express themselves. The appropriate form may take years to reveal itself, and the ability to express well even longer to develop, but the need comes full-blown, bursting and irrepressible. It is a need that we may try to deny, but in many ways and times, it comes back to assert itself and prod us into action.

A prospective student visited my studio this week. I asked her if she was an artist, as she had that bright-eyed look I have recognized in the eyes of art folk. She said, no, she hadnt made art, but she considered herself a creative person. Yes, I assured her, she was an artist at heart, and all she needed to do was take hand to brush to actualize that incipient talent.

I suspect that you, reader, are such a person. My clue is that you have picked up this book to delve into the subject and therefore identify with it in some way. Whether you have actualized your creativity through visual art or any other art form, this book is written for you. It speaks to your spirit that longs to express, to reveal, and to celebrate. Though we are all unique and our methodology is our own, we have much in common. We all want to express well and be understood. This book explores the pathways to those common goals.

On our creative path, we all meet important people who can help us on our way. They may be teachers or fellow artists, authors, or people from history whose work inspires us. In my case, the first such person I met was Norman Raeben, a teacher of painting. I walked into his studio in the rehearsal halls of the famous Carnegie Hall in New York City on a Monday morning in 1969. I was twenty-two years old, a college graduate, and desperately wanting to be an artist.

A friend, Andy, had starting working in this class and he invited me along. This was the only way students could possibly find the placethere were no advertisements, listings, or even a telephone, not that I recall anyway. I remember riding up in the elevatorthe studio was on the eleventh floorand hearing the voices of the opera singers, echoes of violins and pianos, and the myriad sounds I would later learn came from artists at work. This part of the building was an annex to the famous Carnegie Hall theater, and it was filled with artists of all stripes. I remember my excitement in thinking that perhaps, perchance, I could be one of them.

Norman Raeben was a gray-haired, robust lion of a man in his seventies, renowned to be the best painting teacher in town by the little band of students who were his devotees. Andy was a recent convert. I learned that Norman was born in the year 1900 in Russia, and was in fact Norman Rabinowitz, the youngest son of the Yiddish writer Sholem Alecheim. He had changed his name to Raeben and was a painter who had known, studied, and worked with some of the art icons of the early twentieth century.

He had circled in an outer orbit of the Ashcan School painters: Luks, Sloan, Prendergast, Bellows. He had been a student of the great Robert Henri, whose ideas on art were collected by former pupil Margery Ryerson and published in 1923 as The Art Spirit . This wonderful book is still in print, and I have come to learn that much of Normans message has its footing in this volume.

Norman had, shall we say kindly, a commanding personalitybig, strong, insistent, and all-knowing. His bark was loud and his bite could be piercing. He was formidable indeed. Remember, this was the late 1960s, and political correctness was a stance that had not yet taken hold of the common consciousness. This studio was Normans domain and he ruled. Conversation was definitely one-way and you had to be strong, frankly, to take it. He demanded total allegiance. We gave it because we knew how much he could give us and we were willing to pay the price.