The Mnemosyne Foundation

Dialogos/Dialogus

The distinguished Post War American Realist, Joseph Raffael, when queried about the role played by his art and by his creativity in the process of self discovery and in the formulation of a world view, offered the following comments for visitors to The Mnemosyne Foundation Website.

(Please note that all images on this webpage are by Joseph Raffael, for which reason the captions do not repeat the artist's name.)

Ancient Reverie, 2003, watercolor on paper, 62 x 44 1/2 inches.

A COMMENTARY BY JOSEPH RAFFAEL ON CREATIVITY AND SELF DISCOVERY

Some thoughts off the top of the head and from the heart.

I never think about 'talent' or ever use that word.
It's a concept I've never really had.
If I were to think in the direction of that concept of talent,
I probably would move towards 'gift.'
I've received a gift. That gift is multifaceted like a crystal.
Its subtle and non blowing one's own horn.
It's humble and quiet.

I don't feel I ever made a 'decision' to develop professionally.
When I was young it was just what I did. It wasn't a question of choice.
It was like walking or talking or being thirsty or hungry.
It was a natural way of being.
I wasn't conscious of 'it.'

I looked. I saw. I day dreamed. I spaced out. I spaced in. I felt. I drew. I colored. I painted.
It was a psychic temple within me which went with me everywhere.
Was it within me this temple or was I within it?

Matthew's Branch, 1981, watercolor on paper, 14 x 30 inches.

I've been noticing blossoms on trees how at first at they're not there, and then slowly appear infinitesimally, almost invisible-to-the-eye, then they grow little by little becoming larger in their own time, until one day they are round and full of their inevitable flower-ness, and when the time is right, they open.

That, I feel, is how it has been with me. A destiny which I unknowingly followed, slowly and surely.


Left: Scenes From A Life: Studio Wall, 2001, watercolor on paper, 44 ½ x 53 ½ inches. Right: Bookcase, 2001, watercolor on paper, 69 x 44 ¾ inches.

To the process of self discovery:

By this time in my life, after all these decades of making paintings
I do feel that it is through the act of painting
that an artist can discover the Self.
This Self is above and beyond who and what we believe we are.
This act of painting is to help make that invisible visible.

For me, there lies a space within the creative act
wherein the me becomes part of the creative activity (painting)
and in so doing, the me becomes a conduit for the invisible,
for that which yearns to become form.

It's as though there is house in which I normally live,
that house is me, where the me dwells,
and when I begin to paint, I leave that house
and in going outdoors I discover a forest right there before my eyes, and each time I leave the house that forest is different.

Passageway, 2003, watercolor on paper, 56 x 84 inches.

I enter the forest.

It feels unknowable and impenetrable.
Once inside, I follow slowly the pathless path.
When the forest shadows become long, and their darkest
and when the fear, the fatigue and disorientation are most vivid,
when all is left behind and I am in the crucial present,
it is at that time an alchemy takes place which brings forth
the never seen before, the illuminated, the creative --
the discovery of the Self.
I recognize this thrust, this inevitability not as myself,
but as the Self.
So, it is the process of discovery of the Self.

On the matter of subject matter:

My immediate response to this question is that it wasn't me who chose it but that it was the subject which chose me. In any case, the falling in love with subject matter happened a long time ago, and not when I began painting either, but much, much earlier.

I heard on the radio the other day a writer speaking about this topic. He said that it begins before the onset of the rational mind, when we are taking in everything. He spoke also about 'materia prima'. Sounds right to me. It comes from the invisible, seeping into our consciousness without us realizing it.

As I was growing up I loved to look at and have my eyes feast upon things in nature. These sightings, whether they were a tree or a flower or a sunset or a star-filled sky brought me to soul recognition-places in my being which rang true. It was where my sense of beauty in all things began. They became my truth havens. That's where I went to for nourishment and solace. They were my reality checks. It was the result of these 'visits' where my 'subject matter' was born.

By the time I started drawing, which was after a couple years of life, I was already translating these encounters with nature onto paper with color and line and form. Perhaps the following excerpt helps to explain what I mean.

From an unpublished interview with Helen Ferrulli (November 2003):

"We lived in Brooklyn and there was a garden in the back and there were flowers. My mother was a farmer's daughter living in Brooklyn and it was wartime and we had a victory garden in the back. The garden meant something very deep to her. I helped her with it. More than anything my own experience of plant-nature was inspired there in the backyard garden amidst the plants and the cherry tree I think the magic of nature has really affected me from the beginning. Magic in the sense as watching new growth come out of the earth, they weren't there yesterday, but there they are today. Watching blossoms come alive. It's the same as watching a painting come forth out of the white space of a page or canvas... The garden's another example of how one begins with nothing, this time a colored space of brown earth, and then little by little the garden comes forth, the colors and forms emerge. It's not unlike a painting's birth and revelation."

......."I remember Long Island Sound during the summer, the water and the skies in particular. We would go over and watch the sunsets on Peconic Bay. We would just sit in the car or on the beach at night or at dawn looking at the sky. Think of the windshield as though it were a picture frame. We were in fact watching the pictures nature was making and organizing before our eyes through that windshield's frame. It was watching a never-ending painting being created. This was a big part of my childhood............ If life had been devoid of nature I don't think I would have wanted to live. Nature ........... was this non-verbal passionate mystery pageant. Showing itself continually without words. It is so powerful."


Left: Wind on Water, 1982, lithograph, 41 ¾ x 31 inches. Right: Evening Lily, 1981, lithograph, 42 x 29 inches.

On the subject of the development and refinement of the art of painting:

Again, I feel that the 'I' hasn't done anything. The artist's vision comes from a source which is untractable. It is a lifetime process; this doing, this activity, this silent exchange with one's 'themes' which have appeared along the way.

Marriage, 1986, oil on canvas, 69 x 96 inches.

On the subject of the special focus on flowers as subject matter:

Today a friend told me of his nighttime sea voyage three evenings ago in his boat, leaving this shore and going out to some islands. He left at 7PM and arrived at 4AM.

At the end, he quite simply said "C'est beau naviguer la nuit." ("It's beautiful to sail at night"). His one-line summation was like a complete poem for me.

So, why flowers? Mine is also basically a one line answer. Flowers are so beautiful and I love painting them. I love how they come forth in their quiet and seemingly fragile way, and how they keep returning season after season. And all from one seed. They bring us pleasure and beauty and then they fade and die. I feel the answer to the question lies in the flower.

Summer's End , 2004, water color on paper, 70.5 x 45 inches.

Finally, the following excerpt from T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton seems to me to sum up the mystery and power and creative inevitabilty which lie within each of us which is waiting to express itself when we open and merge and alchemize with the unknown, giving birth to the new and never seen before.

Making the invisble, visible.

"Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at."

Excerpt from
T.S. ELIOT'S
BURNT NORTON

Eternal Return, Spring, 2004, watercolor on paper, 45 x 67 inches.

© by Joseph Raffael, Commentary for The Mnemosyne Foundation Website, Fall 2004.

For more on Joseph Raffael, click here.

Joseph Raffael is represented by the Nancy Hoffman Gallery. For information on him, available through the Gallery, and for access to the Gallery web site, click here.