Margot A. Rubin

Artist, cherished wife, loving mother, and beloved friend. Margot’s early childhood was marked by secrecy as the family moved from Connecticut to Oak Ridge, TN where her grandfather, an electrical engineer who had designed the electrical work of the Flatiron building in New York, worked on the atomic bomb.

Later, Margot attended Vassar College, which was a revelation, and she came into her own as a young art historian and painter. After graduating in 1961 she was awarded a fellowship and moved to London to be with her love Lowell, who was studying medicine. She studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art and always remembered the kindness of her favorite professor, Sir Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen’s pictures, who was later revealed to be one of the Cambridge spies.

In the mid 1960s Margot and Lowell now married, returned to the US where Lowell was drafted into the Vietnam war. Margot moved to New Haven to work at Yale’s British art museum and wait with 10-month-old Noah for Lowell’s return. After Lowell’s return Margot and family moved to New York City where Gideon was born, Lowell completed his training in psychiatry and psychoanalysis and Margot became absorbed in the eclectic and vibrant artworld the of the early 1970s.

In 1978 Margot and family moved to Providence RI and Margot took up a position at the Newport Art Museum School, where she taught a generation of printmakers, finally retiring after 37 years. Margot had a progression of studios beginning in NYC. One was over H&H bagel and would be infused with the sweet smell of raisin bagels every afternoon.

In Providence she was part of a community of artists who renovated a Victorian school building into studios. Her art making followed decades, with the Watergate etchings and large oil portraits of the 1970s, the abstract mountainscapes of the 1980s, and an explosion of monoprints in the 1990s. In the early 2000s she became focused on painting again, working heavily in encaustic. In the 2010s, Margot inaugurated a new era, with an amazing proliferation of ceramic sculptures. In her last years, impacted by Parkinson’s, she took to art making on the iPad, producing layered images that carried on from her rich monotypes. Throughout her life Margot loved textiles, especially African Materials and was often seen wearing beautiful hand blocked clothes from India and Scandinavia.

Margot spent summers in London, Florence, as well as Maine and the Cape. She loved swimming in the pond at Wellfleet in the early evenings, always talking as much as she was swimming. Margot had a wonderful elegance of movement, which combined so well with her beautifully chosen clothes. So many people felt nurtured and enriched by Margot’s great intelligence, her empathetic caring, her ability to lift and encourage those who were in need, and her authentic ability to truly engage with all those she encountered. We are all so sad to see her go.