Photo by Giorgia Di Tria

Born in 1988 in Italy, Clara Rubin is a painter based in Milan. She studied at Camberwell College of Arts in London and later completed the Turps Correspondence Course in 2022. Working primarily with still life, her practice draws on the quiet intimacy of domestic interiors, familiar neighborhoods, and the everyday rhythms of Italian life. Rubin’s paintings often begin with something subtle - a reflection, a moment of transparency - and unfold into layered meditations on home, identity and the uneasy line between comfort and surveillance. Her work invites a slow kind of looking, where ordinary scenes take on a quiet, mysterious charge.

Hey Clara! Thanks for joining us. How are you these days?

Hello Selin and team at Ait Istanbul. Thank you for the question, I am very well thank you. I am loving the first year of parenthood. I am also currently working on a new set of paintings, which I am grateful for.

Before we dive in… what does a typical morning look like for you?

I usually wake up at about 7/7:30 by my amazing 1 year old daughter Costanza. Myself, her dad/my husband and Costanza have breakfast together. Morning breakfast is one of my favourite rituals, I love it so much.

Then I have 4 hours for my work between 9 am and 1 pm.

Nai’s House

What’s your first memory of painting? Can you remember what you were making or how it made you feel?

I love this question; I really like thinking about the first time I was painting. 

I would say the first time ever was when I was about 16. I had this impulse of copying what I liked from magazines I found at home with Pencils, watercolours or acrylics. I have had a passion for visual communication since then. One of the first memorable ones was a big pattern with naive water and fish motifs. I felt real joy and satisfaction painting it.

Your paintings feel like familiar places we’ve never quite been. They carry this gentle warmth, like walking into someone’s home and knowing exactly where the light hits. Do you think that has something to do with growing up in Italy? That Mediterranean softness really shows up in the work.

Thank you so much for your kind words, it means a lot. Yes definitely, I was born in Italy, and I spent most of my life here. I think the light has a very big influence on the mood of my work. I have been thinking about this as well, a while ago I heard a great podcast that I recommend, called “Talk Art” by Robert Diament and Russell Tovey with artist Paula Siebra. I am a huge fan of her work; she was saying in the podcast how her work is very much influenced by the mystique of light from her home Brazil. She mentioned how the light there is never too bright, somehow there is always an aura to it, like it’s never a harsh bright light. Even if the weather is warm and sunny. When she went to Italy for work for a long period of time, she was stunned by how different the light is here. I find that very true and super interesting related to how much the climate from home can actually influence how people think and work there. There is a brightness in Italy that I find in my work.

(Left) St. Michele (Right) Entrance Door in Garda

You’ve painted bathrooms, bedrooms, hillsides, entryways… are these places you know personally? Or do they become something else once they’re on paper?

Yes they are all places I know, or I have been to. But I love the idea of trying to make them a little bit more abstract in the process, so they become not as specific at the end. I wish to leave imagination to the viewer.

The starting point is always somewhere I know or an experience I had because I get a lot of inspiration from that. Working from memory and from personal photographs drives me and gives me a lot of purpose to make the work.

How do you know when a painting is finished? Do you ever struggle to let it go?

Yes, I am quite fussy with my work, sometimes I redo things a few times before I am pleased with it. I would say in the process I am hard on myself. I look for a few elements to work out, like the concept/theme, the composition, the technique. These elements most times don’t work out straight away but after a lot of practice and thinking. Towards the end of the piece, if I think I have worked hard enough on it I let it go. With my medium and the sizes I work with one month/one month and a half it usually the time it takes

Are there things you notice more now, thanks to painting? Like, has it changed how you move through the world?

Yes, after a few years I tend to observe, look and wonder what a good subject for a painting could be a lot. My obsession for visual communication got stronger with the years.

(Left) Bathroom III (Right) Installation view from 'Dentro', group exhibition at Somers Gallery, 2023

Do you have a favorite painting you’ve made?

One of my favourite paintings I made is inspired by my amazing mum. I adore my mum, everything I do is thanks to her, I am forever thankful for our bond. I wanted to celebrate our relationship. So, the painting is about when I was younger and lived with my parents for a while, and I sometimes chatted to her in the bathroom while she was getting ready. She is a very positive and optimistic person, as well as bright and cultured. Talking to her is refreshing and fun, I wanted to express that.

I’m curious: what’s your studio like? Are you someone who keeps everything tidy or is it more of a beautiful mess?

I would say tidy. The medium I use is water based so that really helps because you can easily clean all stains completely. I clean all my surrounding surfaces every now and then. But I am very keen about using other mediums like hopefully oil colours soon. I will have to be more careful then about staining because it’s a much messier medium.

Photos by Giorgia Di Tria

And to wrap up - what are you dreaming of these days?

I would love to get confident with oils or acrylics as much as I know gouache. Gouache is a pale medium, and I feel the need to “translate” my current work into more powerful colours. I think it takes years to know a technique well, and I am keen/ready to start very soon to use either oils or acrylics for proper paintings. 

Because gouache is so opaque and delicate, I feel like my current body of work looks like drawings rather than paintings, almost as if they are preparatory pieces for bigger and more vibrant paintings. Having said that gouache has a special, unique quality to it as I find this medium much more rare to find. I am happy about my current work, but I’d love for it to progress in the next few years.

Untitled II