About Shua Raskin

Born on June 15, 2006, in New York City, he was raised in Brooklyn and grew up within the Chabad Orthodox Jewish community in Crown Heights. 

 

His relationship with art began to take real shape at age fourteen, though he has lived in an art-minded world for as long as he can remember. Even as a child, he was deeply drawn to nature—to hikes, to birds, and to the wonder of discovering new experiences.

 

Alongside this creative curiosity, he developed a serious inclination toward life’s deeper questions: What things truly are, and how perception shapes meaning. Over time, these ideas evolved—becoming more complex, more nuanced, and increasingly central to his artistic expression.

 

He has pursued both structured and independent study. He studied privately and later spent time at the New York School of the Arts Academy, though he feels most compelled to follow his own artistic path.

 

His work has been exhibited in local Brooklyn galleries, and he is currently exhibiting at the Central Park Fine Arts Gallery in Manhattan. He has also participated in a conducting masterclass, where he had the opportunity to conduct the Prague Philharmonia.

 

These experiences have sharpened his ongoing exploration of the relationship between different forms of expression—particularly how they speak to one another and deepen meaning across disciplines.

 

An article has also been written about his connection between Judaism, music, and art—three areas that, in his life, have never felt truly separate. Together, they nourish and intensify one another, each enriching the other’s significance.

 

Six figures have profoundly shaped his life and continue to inspire him every day: Israel Edelson, Gustav Mahler, Ludwig van Beethoven, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Joseph Zbukvic, and Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (the Alter Rebbe). Their influence is evident in everything he creates.

 

He is currently studying piano, theory, and conducting with Israel Edelson, a former conducting student of Leonard Bernstein.

 

To him, conducting is akin to painting—indeed, like God creating the universe: drawing together sound, shape, color, and texture, and weaving them into a new world.

 

Above all, his art reflects his lived experience with sincerity. His greatest aspiration is to never sacrifice his true self in favor of something that does not genuinely belong to him.