"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost.
The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression.
It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others"
----Martha Graham

"The imagination has no patience with repetition.
The old clichés of explanation and meaning are unmasked and their ...... transparency no longer offers shelter.
We become interested in what might be rather than what has always been.
Experimentation, adventure and innovation lure us towards new horizons.
What we never thought possible now becomes an urgent and exciting pathway".

John O'Donohue in Beauty -- The Invisible Embrace

"I am treading more and more into leaves and silence. I see more faces watching, non-human faces.
Ironically, I who profess no religion find the whole of my life a religious pilgrimage.
The origins of this hunger are as mysterious as why we, who are last year's dust and rain, have risen from that dust to to look about
with the devised crystal of a raindrop before we subside once more into snow and whirling vapor."

All the Strange Hours--The Excavation of a Life
by Loren Eiseley

Interviews

Jean-Claude Lebenstejn
JR interview
in English - en Français

Interview
with Helen Ferrulli
click here

Joseph, discusses
his art and his creativity,
offering the following comments
for visitors to
The Mnemosyne Foundation Website
click here

2006 Kathrine Page interview
with Joseph Raffael
for
Roberts Wesleyan College Students
click here

Virginia Anne Bonito, PhD
"Joseph Raffael
and the Contemporary American Realists"
click here

Donald Kuspit's essay
original and unedited version of
"Reflection of Nature:
Paintings of Joseph Raffael"
click here

John Fitz Gibbon
complete essay
click here

Mark Daniel Cohen
original and unedited
catalogue essay
click here

Neil Young
click here

Ralph Waldo Emerson
click here