I am Raphael Raabe. That is not quite true. That is only an artist name. Actually, I don’t know who I am. Even if my real name was here, my first sentence would not be true, because I am definitely not my name.

Are you your name?

I’ve been asking myself for quite some time who (or what) I really am. When I say “really”, I really mean “REALLY”! Most people tell a story when they have to give an answer to this question. Ironically, they even believe in it like a child believes in Santa Claus. I hope I did not offend you. You are certainly not here to contemplate on some thousand-year-old philosophical questions. That’s not what this page is about.

Nevertheless, most of the artworks presented here refer to something we strongly identify with: our face. We look in the mirror every day and feel a constant, continuous sense of the existence of an ego, although in reality we die and are reborn at every moment. This is the overlooked obvious. Our faces serve as representatives to the outside world. Sometimes they support us as a mask for implicit denial of the truth. Mostly however, they help us in communicating with our fellow human beings. Infants even communicate with the outside world to a large extent via their facial expressions.

Of course our face cannot be what we really are, because I have already spoken of an outside world. This implies an inner world. Therefore, our true self must be in the inner world, because our face is the window to the outer world. Apart from that, most people would still identify themselves as their old self after a facial surgery and not as a new self, even though their face has changed. In order to realize this fact, a face operation is not needed at all: in the course of growing up, the human face, exaggeratedly and unscientifically expressed, undergoes a real metamorphosis. Of course, there are many recognizable features in a person’s facial features. This can be seen in comparing old and current photos of a person. Nevertheless, the face changes in the course of life and therefore cannot be a continuous, constant ego.

Oh, this is getting too philosophical again … At this point I would like to quote one of my favorite artists, Zdzisław Beksiński:

“Meaning is meaningless to me.
I do not care for symbolism and
I paint what I paint without meditating on story.”

Unfortunately I did not find the original Polish version of the quote, but that is irrelevant. Relevant is only that the works presented here are not about stories. There is nothing to analyze or interpret. I simply painted the portraits of the people I admire, appreciate or love. It was all about the pure bliss I felt in the creative process, whether the motifs were emotional faces or beautiful creatures of nature. That is all.