Mystic Lily

 

Joseph Raffael

  1933 - 2021 (biography)

1976  

Color aquatint & etching 

5 3/8 x 6" platemark 

in green pencil lower center 

9 of 40  

dated and editioned in green pencil, lower center; in pencil on verso: "All reproduction rights reserved by artist." 

Artists' Prints 1979, #612, illustrated, page 140. 

white wove Rives BFK with watermark 

published 

Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York 

5364 

$1,200.00 

This small aquatint is printed on a sheet of BFK Rives paper that measures 30 x 22" and is signed in a green pencil halfway down the lower margin.

In the mid 1970s, while living in California, Joseph Raffael began working on a series of paintings and prints that concentrated on the effects of light on natural structures, often using the interaction of water and flowers as subjects for this exploration. "Mystic Lily" is handled like an oil painting, with the lily and the lily pads floating on a black background, water in shadow.

Raffael makes the following comment in his autobiography: "1975, January-my first visit to Hawaii is sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior as part of a Bicentennial program inviting artists to honor the United States. A touring exhibition of paintings by the participating artists follows, called America 1976; I exhibit Island Magic. My return flight from Hawaii is delayed for several hours, so I leave the airport; in Hilo during the wait, I discover and photograph a lily pond. I had taken more than a thousand slides during my Hawaii trip, but when I return to my studio, I realize that the lily ponds are what I want to paint."