Joseph Raffael was born in Brooklyn in 1933. He received his B.F.A. from Yale University and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Florence and Rome in 1958-59 and a Tiffany Fellowship in 1960. He resides in France.

Raffael’s work is synonymous with love of nature. His newest watercolors of carp, swimming in lapis blue waters with reed grasses, take a beloved motif to a new level. At the top of the watercolor a triangle of golden light echoes the grasses and swirling fish. A border echoing the jewel-like colors of the pond surrounds the piece. Unlike passages within the image, the border is rapid gestures of color, strokes of blue, red, gold that set up a musical rhythm at the edges. The swirl of carp and the daz-zle of light meet equal intensity in the artist’s own inner frame.

Using myriad greens and blues and yellows, sometimes as many as 20-30 of each color, the artist weaves his tapestry of life in the pond. There is no one focal point or spot on which the eye rests in this work. The energy is equally intense in every square inch. If one’s eye comes to rest in the pond, it is in the glowing blues of the pond, filled with light and life and movement. The pond Raffael paints is in his own backyard, thus he can photograph at any time of day to capture its magic.

Raffael’s method of working in watercolor is unique. He paints on a flat table with tiny brushes, working wet into dry, rarely putting color on top of color. He rolls his paper to view only 20 inches at a time and thus abstracts the image. Each passage of the work demands Raffael’s full attention, yielding a work of richness in every square inch of equal intensity and energy.