Think Magazines - Murray Weinstein

THINK CULTURE
By C H A R L I E C R E S P O
VIVID
GEOMETRICS
Second Career Emerges from Printing Background
MURRAY WEINSTEIN never
thought that he’d become an artist.
“My first love was carpentry,” he
said. “Art was something I always admired. I did
have an interest in art, but I couldn’t afford it.”
The South Florida artist grew up in Brooklyn’s
Brownville neighborhood and although his passion
for carpentry always remained, he never would pursue a
career in woodworking. On the advice of a teacher at New York
School of Printing, Weinstein received an academic education and learned printing production at a shop in Manhattan,
which subsequently led him to employment with Candid Litho
Printing in 1974 and ultimately the purchase of the company in
July 1990.
After a long and successful career, Weinstein retired in 2000,
turning over Candid to his two sons. During the early stages
of his retirement, he dabbled in many of the conventional
retirement activities: golfing, traveling, and gin rummy. Yet
Weinstein couldn’t shake the feeling that
something was missing, and he eventually
realized that painting might be able to fill
him with the same satisfaction that he had
found working in the printing industry.
“I was just 75, and I was looking for
something to do to keep my mind busy and
fill up my day,” he said. Painting “popped
into my head and it took me a little while
to figure out what I was going to do with
this idea.”
In a stunningly short amount of time,
Weinstein not only figured out how he was
going to begin painting, but he developed
the distinct abstract style that characterizes all of his work. Influenced by Piet
Mondrian, Paul Klee, and Gerhard Richter,
Weinstein calls his style “compatible contrasting color with a hard-edge geometic
abstraction.”
“When I paint, I try to find colors that
normally wouldn’t go together — that do go
together,” he explains. “All of my paintings
are solid colors; I don’t do any shading.
I haven’t tried another style, and I’m not
interested in another style. I’m interested
in thinking about what I can do that no one
else does with this style at this time that I
have developed.”
Originally, Weinstein’s paintings weren’t
meant for public consumption. In fact, he
only went into a gallery to discuss selling
his work because he had so many pieces
that he simply began to wonder if someone
might be interested in them.
Just as quickly as he developed his own
style, Weinstein’s paintings found an ever-growing audience. His work has already
been exhibited at Artblend, a 6,200-squarefoot gallery in Fort Lauderdale, and has
shown at the Artexpo in New York,
and at ArtHamptons on Long Island,
N.Y. Most recently, 13 of Weinstein’s works have found their way
to the new corporate offices of Blue
Ocean Worldwide in Las Vegas. In
addition, his work is set to be shown
in December 2014 at contemporary
art fair SPECTRUM Miami.
Even though he enjoys and values the
recognition his work is receiving, that’s
not the main reason he plans to continue
painting.
“I paint because I love what I’m doing,”
he said. “The actual enjoyment is putting
the paint on the canvas and getting the
finished product. I feel accomplished and
successful, which is more than just being
retired with nothing to do.”