“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
2008

There is no end of the sky for the bird.
Angie Boissevain quoting from Eihei Dogen Zenji: Genjo Koan

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

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…”