American

Joseph Raffael

U.S. b. 1933
Endless Journey 87.0009

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In the early 1970s, Joseph Raffael began to paint fish, as well as that most illusive of subjects, moving water. He also began using photography to aid him in capturing certain illusionistic qualities on canvas. Endless Journey depicts a carp, a Japanese symbol of good fortune, swimming through sparkling water. Raffael admires the aesthetic qualities of Japanese art as well as its creative union of the individual and nature. While Raffael was studying art at the Cooper Union in New York, one of his instructors encouraged him to think of himself as a visual poet. This attitude, along with extensive training in color theory that he received at Yale from the legendary teacher, Josef Albers, formed his intense attachment to color, its arrangement on the canvas and its ability to represent light.

 

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