Biography
The Art of Magical Whimsey
Steve Rotblatt
Things don’t always work out the way they were planned. Yep. Sometimes they turn out better… or certainly wildly different. This is my journey...
When I was three, I wanted to be a comedian. I would entertain anyone who came within earshot. And word was -- I was adorable, or so my mother told me. The adorable wore off in Middle School, but the part that was wanting to make people laugh, and have a good time doing it, remained.
In High School I started to act in plays and then became a theater major in College. My parents were highly supportive as my mother was a painter, mainly abstract and some extraordinary pen and ink sketches, and my father was a weaver who took some of my mother’s paintings and created remarkable wall hangings from them. They exposed me to a world of art from classic to experimental. I was drawn to strong, emphatic artists like Ben Shahn (I own one of his prints), Chagall (I own a few of his lithos), Picasso, Bauhaus artists like Kandinsky (the early paintings) and Paul Klee, and the highly colorful and evocative work of the Impressionists.
In college I wrote, acted, directed, created poetry readings, and did some mime (it wasn’t a joke then).
I took a class in costume design with a Broadway costume man named Richard Triplet and started to do a lot of drawing for the class exercises and loved it. Mr. Triplet was a very quiet gent with a love of the unusual. So, while I was drawing three-legged ballet dancers and getting some rough feedback from class members – like “people don’t have three legs” - Mr. Triplet loved every mark I made. In fact, at the end of the class, he asked me for a drawing so that he could frame it and put it on his walls. He said he had never in his career asked for something like that. I was moved and encouraged, seeing some light in that tunnel of art.
After college at the University of California at Irvine, a bunch of us actors and directors from the Irvine program ended up in New York City. My friend Kristin, now wife, was one of them. You can see her, the yellow haired women in many of my paintings. While in New York, we created a company of actors and writers who went on to found Lexington Conservatory Theatre in the Catskills of New York (now Capital Rep in Albany, NY). Every summer for five years we toiled without money, living on peanut butter, oats and beer, with an occasional vegetable. It was glorious. We did 6 shows a summer, readings of new plays at midnight (I wrote one of them and directed others). The troop remained fairly steady and consistent, giving all of us room to grow and explore hidden talents.
At the time I was doing some black and white scribbles that appeared to be interesting to my compatriots, so I did some banners, flyers, and artwork to support the company.
As most things amazing and transformative, we toiled and then went our separate ways.
My path was acting in some television: Rumor of War mini-series, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Outrageous Fortune, Frasier, Cheers, and other wonderful acting projects.
But like most actors, if I might be so bold, the resume looked okay, but the amount of actual work did not fill up the creative bucket. So, I wrote scripts, one optioned by ABC, wrote for an animated children’s series and tried to break into any creative edifice that I could.
In addition to writing, I did a bunch of drawings and some interesting paintings. The paintings started with a photograph that I copied in a grainy fashion, glued to foamboard, and then collaged elements that I hand-painted into it, using spit and glue. Because I love story telling, mainly involving human beings, my imagery tended to be tales of people in motion.
Then something odd happened. When I was writing scripts, I thought I would throw a couple of greeting cards together. I did ten greetings, copied them, laminated them, and sent them to 10 companies (I bought a “how to break into greeting cards” book).
In two months, I received two contracts in the mail: One from Recycled Greetings (the third largest paper greeting card company) and another from Paper Moon, a more local and progressive group (now gone). I picked Recycled. I was hired and designed greeting cards for them for 5 years.
My first professional not greeting card job was to illustrate a CDROM offering for “A Brief History of Time,” the Stephen Hawking book. For this project I created about 30 illustrations and won an award for the effort.
I was encouraged and got bold. So, I bought a page in one of the art directories. A month later I received a call from the Smithsonian Museum and was hired to do “A Kid’s Guide to the Smithsonian Museum.” I was told that the choice they were making was to either hire me and do the book or -- not do the book at all.
"A Kid's Guide" was a year long project. They sent me dioramas, photos of their exhibits, and I did my drawings and pasted them into the photo. The dioramas came to vibrant life and told a story of a group of kids having a blast learning what the museum had to offer. While I was working on that I did some book reviews, magazines, some book covers, and kept my greeting card gig rolling. All the jobs I was hired to do had some degree of storytelling attached to the imagery.
In the 90’s I thought that I would crowd all of these talents together: writing, acting, directing and, most importantly for me, drawing. I applied and was accepted to grad school at UCLA in the animation department (where I now teach). After all, I could tell a story with words and art. Let’s Goooooo!
After graduation, it was discovered that I had a tumor in my chest the size of a soccer ball. To purge it I had a 12-hour life-defying surgery at the National Institute of Health with two of the best surgeons in the World. After surviving. I realized there was little chance of me working 16 hours a day for an animation company hunched over a computer. As luck would have it, the internet had just become an actual thing. I had an idea for an animated line of greeting cards that we could sell by subscription. So, one of my buds and I from the NY Theatre Company we founded started www.rubberchickencards.com, an animated greeting card company. I did all the drawings and animation and my buddy and I did the voice overs along with some other great friends, who were brilliant at voiced cartoons.
Rubber Chicken Cards was a success. Since that time, I have been doing that business and teaching at UCLA Grad School and Santa Monica College.
While I did those great projects, I also continued with my painting. Instead of taking a photograph and collaging into it, I took a photograph (for the most part) and digitally collaged my art into it. I was used to the digital world through animation. And that form of art creation offered huge advantages in terms of how I wanted to create.
I found that painting by dipping a digital pen into digital ink was a joyous experience. I can dig into the painting, getting really, really granular and tell these great stories of odd people. Happy people out for a birdwatch; lonely people on a beach in a windstorm; a woman caught on a magical night… Stories of both dreamy magic and profound whimsey. Frankly I have tried going back to painting with traditional materials and it simply does not do the trick, either in the creation experience or the outcome of the work. I find that the ability to layer color and content, sometimes hundreds of layers in a painting, provides me a universe of possibilities.
Another interesting thing about my artwork might be the fact that I am colorblind. Hard to believe when you look at vibrant colors in the painting. Well, I do see all colors; I just might see them differently than you. Conveniently, the programs I use label their colors in the swatches so that I know what actual color my digital pen is dipping into. Often, I ask my wife or daughter, “what is this color?”
Currently, the greeting card business, that I now run with my daughter, has taken a back seat to full time painting.
Clients who have purchased my creations tell me that the work brings them joy and spices up their homes and offices with happy color and whimsey. They love that every time they look at the paintings, they see something else that makes them smile.
The folks who own my art are also delighted that you cannot mistake a “Rotblatt” painting - much like you can't mistake a Peter Max.
