Artwork Description
Raphaëlle Goethals – Silk Road
Dimensions: 73 x 61″ framed / 72 x 60″ unframed
Year: 2017
Medium: wax, oil, mixed media on panel
Raphaëlle Goethals is a self-described bicultural artist, who grew up in Belgium and left for the United States to pursue her artistic career in Los Angeles—culminating in her move to New Mexico where she has lived and produced work for the past twenty years. Due to her upbringing in an environment riddled with the artistic successes of Flemish Renaissance Artists and more contemporary individuals such as René Magritte, Goethals’ work often draws on this rich history, emphasizing a sense of process and creation in conjunction with art historical elements. Her work is best described as abstract, where Goethals gradually builds up detailed surfaces through layering wax and resin, incorporating elements from the present through each additional layer and the past by manipulating new layers to reveal the textures beneath. Goethals’ works like Dust Stories with Red redefine traditional ideas surrounding language and time and serves as a personal adaptation of a landscape, where her pieces visually explore the human mind rather than a geographical region. Goethals challenges viewers to limit the scope of the information they take in and are frequently bombarded with by observing pieces that are reductive in nature and free viewers from external distractions.
Goethals’ paintings have been featured in numerous museum exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe, including a recent solo exhibition at the Morris Graves Museum. Raphaëlle Goethals is one of a group of remarkable women artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Martin, Agnes Pelton, Susan Rothenberg, Linda Benglis, Florence Pierce, and Judy Chicago—instrumental in creating the world-renowned contemporary art center of Santa Fe.