Meet Roberta Fineberg

We were lucky to catch up with Roberta Fineberg recently and have shared our conversation below.

Roberta, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

When I was in my early twenties I wanted to flee from myself and go far away, so I moved to France for a decade in the 1980s-1990s. As a young expat in Europe with limited income I navigated alone a new world – in fact it was an old beautiful world, which taught me so much about culture, literature, art, and love.
There was a group of creative American expats in Paris at the time – we were all searching for something intangible while pursuing a craft.

After 10 years in France I spoke French fluently, knew Paris like I had lived there my entire life, read a lot in English and French, wrote, traveled, and developed my photography practice.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am not afraid to experiment and I enjoy indulging my beginner’s mind. I search for new techniques often using unorthodox approaches – I’ll try anything once, repeating a process if it’s working. For example, as my photography practice grew I began printmaking and abstract painting.

For my lens-based work on the subject of books and color fields, combining photography and oil on canvas, I mix pigments for bright almost fluorescent colors that pop as in “Venus Rising” (photo of books) and for a cross-processed photo collage on books I created rich moody colors in photoshop for “Homage to writer Edmund White.”
The two works were recently exhibited in New York at Zurcher Gallery during Armory week 2025.

Also in 2025, following the publication of “Butterfly” (Phaidon) in which one of my photographs of psychedelic butterflies appears (p.121), I prepared three trippy butterflies in digital format ready for my first launch at Sedition, a digital art site.
And I finished a writing project that I have been working on and off for over a decade – a fantastical children’s story on a young artist and her unusual mentor …. Yes, I am shopping that project now!

See you on instagram @amusepro

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Trust your gut, experiment, take a few risks, do what you love life is short, walk 10,000 steps a day – very good for processing new ideas.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

“The Leopard” by di Lampedusa is one of my favorite books. It’s an Italian “Gone With The Wind.” Beginning in the 1860s the Leopard tells the story of a societal order in flux, an aristocratic way of life confronted with change, and characters who must adapt to the present for their survival and evolution. The Leopard takes place in Sicily – against a backdrop of opulence, rawness, simplicity, great beauty, expansive nature, and sunlight.

The Leopard is an epic Italian historical drama and is currently a 2025 Netflix series, too. Popular interest today in the work by di Lampedusa reminds me of the French expression: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they stay the same).

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.robertafineberg.com
• Instagram: @amusepro
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertafineberg
• Other: https://linktr.ee/RobertaFineberg