Back in the days when Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit topped the best seller lists, career changes in midstream seldom happened. When they did, eyebrows lifted and tongues wagged.

Some fifty years later however, our society offers the freedom to explore lost opportunities and/or latent dreams. Former corporate executives teach in classrooms, factory workers enter academia, lawyers run hospitals. And Howard Rubenstein of North Kingstown, once a Rhode Island periodontist, morphs into a professional photographer.

His was a dream deferred. Through college, dental school and graduate work, his photographic eye, which, with the help of a Brownie Hawkeye camera, began developing in his childhood home of Syracuse, New York, patiently waited its turn. Through moving to Rhode Island, setting up an office, later to become two offices, and raising a family, photography remained a constant beacon of light to which he turned when time permitted. Increasingly, he found himself looking through the camera’s lens. Photographing all the Rhode Island beaches and scores of other images in his adopted state, Rubenstein also studied with an array of noted photographers.

But the decision to devote himself full-time to the pursuit of his art came hard, says this intrepid art photographer. In fact, it took him over four years to make a clean break. Now eight years later, relaxing in the comfort of his airy, light filled studio, surrounded by easels, tripods, tubes of paint and brushes in various sizes, Rubenstein recalls his feeling at the time as those of jumping off a cliff, quickly adding that he is not sorry he took the leap. “I loved my patients and my staff, but I had lost the passion for my work,” he explains.

Initially, to finance his new lifestyle, Rubenstein turned to shooting weddings and making studio portraits, both of which he soon found limiting, stifling his creativity and ultimately leading to another tough decision. Would he go mainstream with work that he knew would sell or would he sacrifice, follow his dream and not worry about who liked his art? Choosing the latter, he says simply, “I ended up doing it my own way. Given who I am, I had no other choice.”

Reviewing his art over the years, this intrepid photographer/painter, a trim attractive man with closely cropped gray hair and beard, dressed in jeans and a tee shirt and looking decidedly younger than his 62 years, describes his five bodies of work: black-and-white abstract landscapes of slot canyons, abstract figurative work, also in black-and-white, Rhode Island images, oil/acrylic paintings on photographs which he terms photo-paintings, and travel photographs which are in color. The canyon pieces, black-and-white photographs of Antelope Canyon in Arizona, are now on a national museum tour, including stops in Florida, Minnesota, Virginia and Texas. His abstract figurative work was recently exhibited in a solo show at the Newport Art Museum and at Newport’s Marlborough Gallery.

Although he has garnered awards and honors for a variety of media, he proudly calls winning the first annual Governor’s Award, titled “Scenes of Rhode Island 2004,” for his photograph of Narragansett Beach “quite a thrill.”

“This photo is unusual in that it was taken with infra-red film with a medium format camera and a specialized lens designed for that film,” Rubenstein notes. Writing about the winning entry, Bryan Bourke of the Providence Jounal called it “a dreamy daguerreotype black-and-white print of sunbathers.” The photograph will be hung in the governor’s office and signed limited edition copies will be given as gifts to visiting dignitaries.

Surprisingly, Rubenstein credits the Beatles, along with Picasso, among those who inspire his art. “They kept changing their styles and had the courage to keep trying different things. Their creative expression and development constantly evolved.” Rubenstein acknowledges that his own style frequently fluctuates.

A peaceful serenity, found within his clock-free studio and outside among shaded gravel-lined paths and colorful perennial gardens, seem to reflect the nature of the man himself. Clearly at home in his second profession, he says he can’t believe dentistry was ever part of his life. “All I think about is art,” he says. “Everyday is a great day. To be able to create art in a free way is a joyful experience.”

From The North Kingstown Villager, September 2004. Written by Mary Welch.

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