Joseph Raffael - What's New

"The older I get, the more I feel that color is what painting is.
Painting is primarily color.
Theoretically I learned that at the beginning, perhaps it was Albers from whom I first heard it, but here I am now,
in these twilight skies, knowing that, for me, painting is color.
And because my works are primarily about the act of painting while using nature's realm as point of departure, (or is it point of arrival?)-----
and that I feel nature in all its mystery and spiritual breath can best be expressed by color's energetic spectrum.
Color is a language. It is the language of painting. How painting expresses itself is in large part with color.
With all its variety and liveliness, color acts in the work of art as blood does as it circulates through our bodies.
Color is what keeps the painting alive and moving.

When I paint, it is basically the putting of one color next to another -----
that's really what I do. Colors building slowly and inevitably, constructing and creating
what is to be born in the painting-to-be.
One color appears, and then another one goes next to it,
then another lies itself over a color, and then a spot here, a speck there,
and then an air of a color there, then a glob of color there.
A kind of democratic state is born as all these individual color beings join together,
living,working and playing together in one space.

I believe that the more color-surprises reveal themselves,
the more the painting will be rich, more like life, in all its revelations of the unexpected,
the never known before, the inevitable being made manifest
Let the tapestry be as full as possible.
Let the colors sing and zing.
Let colors speak their language of life.

Painting is primarily color."

Joseph Raffael
March 2008

Joseph drawing in
a new painting
March 2008

Joseph & Lannis Raffael
in front of
"Muriel's Vase: Autumn"
April 2008
to see more
click here

Joseph drawing in
A Passage
January 2007

Joseph's Most Recent Paintings

-"A Passage"

click here

-"Anniversary"

click here

-"Muriel's Vase- Summer"

click here

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes
but in having new eyes.
--Marcel Proust


Video PAINTING: Five Minutes of Fine Tuning click here	Progression of "Muriel's Vase - Summer" click here	Video Exhibition with Nancy Hoffman & Sarah Strickley click here	Video "Painting Spirit" created by Thaddeus Scott click here

Garden Pond with Spirit & Luna
photo by Samuel Tisserand

	A letter Ansel Adams, an icon of landscape photography, sent to his friend Cedric Wright on June 10, 1937 Dear Cedric, A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside of me; things that relate to those who are loved and those who are real friends. For the first time I know what love is; what friends are; and what art should be. Love is a seeking for a way of life; the way that cannot be followed alone; the resonance of all spiritual and physical things…. Friendship is another form of love — more passive perhaps, but full of the transmitting and acceptances of things like thunderclouds and grass and the clean granite of reality. Art is both love and friendship and understanding: the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things. It is more than kindness, which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is a recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the interrelations of these. Ansel
photos by Ansel Adams

From a letter from Hans Peeters.

"I have savored your paintings, Joseph, almost daily. To my eye, water is the great unifying theme, no matter which way those sometimes unbelievable colors take you. Even land-based scenes -- flowers, woodlots, birds -- seem water images (reflections?) tilted upright, an impression that is of course enhanced by the translucency of the medium (Summer's End 2004 is a perfect example). Seen as water paintings, these works invite exploration of their depths and their mysteries, their allusions, suggestions, and ever-changing shapes.
Colors diffuse or form briefly solid objects or outline biomorphic shapes -- how watery is that?

The great translucent white fish in "Spirit" (2006) did not strike me as crucifix-like, at least not in the beginning; rather, I saw it as a mothership hovering while its smaller adjunct vessels explore the incredible diversity and wealth of space, either aquatic or cosmic.
Must be my areligious, biologist's eye. And I see the orderly movement and comportment of the fish in "Pond, Fish Reflections" (2005)
as an example of the intrinsic symmetry of nature, as also reflected in the leaves.

Yet, boisterous life coils below the surface, erupting here and there (Life Streams, 2004).
And blues are everywhere, painted by someone who must love to gaze into the sky, a dreamer..."

In Memoriam
John O'Donohue
(1956 - 2008)
john o donohue

John O'Donohue, the Irish poet, passed away peacefully in his sleep 3 January 2008

A Blessing for Equilibrium

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the music of laughter break through your soul.

As the wind wants to make everything dance,
May your gravity be lightened by grace.

Like the freedom of the monastery bell,
May clarity of mind make your eyes smile.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May a sense of irony give you perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,
May fear or worry never put you in chains.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
To hear in the distance the laughter of God.

~ John O'Donohue ~
(Benedictus - A Book of Blessings)

sky
____________

"I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
Of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
To allow my living to open me,
To make me less afraid,
More accessible;
To loosen my heart,
until it becomes a wing
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit."
Dawna Markova