Biography
In 1987 Reuben was accepted onto a Foundation Course with an exceptional ability award in drawing. After a year at the Manchester Academy of Art he moved to London to study a BA Honours Degree in Fine Art painting, graduating in 1990.

In 1992 he studied a Master of Arts at the Slade School of Art 'Being part of the University of London, gave me access to study anatomy and draw directly from preserved human body parts'.  He begins to study the work of Keith Simpson (1907-1985) first professor of forensic medicine at the university and one of the most eminent pathologists of the twentieth century. 'He opened my eyes to the mysteries of fact'.

Whilst drawing at the Royal College of Surgeons he came across the work of Henry Tonks (1862-1937) a past professor of fine art at the Slade, who made studies of facial wounds, which comprised of 72 pastel drawings made in 1916, when he was attached to the Cambridge Hospital in Aldershot. It was there that Harold Gillies was pioneering maxillo facial surgery on casualties from the Western Front. ' The Pastels are primarily a record of injuries and show patients as they arrived prior to surgery, they are a profound and moving record of human disfigurement.'

In 1993 Reuben begins a travel scholarship to study the work of German painter Mathias Grünewald (1460-1528) whose studies of the human head had been a major influence on Francis Bacon. Reuben visited Colmar to see the Isenheim Altarpiece, a crucifixion which details Christ's wounds in vivid hypereal colour. After seeing this Altarpiece Reuben dramatically realised that painting was a syntax, a language, another way of understanding the self and the world.

Reuben lives and works in London.