Raphe Coombes, The Corner Store Gallery, photograph by Madeline Young.
Raphe Coombes - Live, Love, Paint
Raphe Coombes is based in northern NSW. His practice involves painting and drawing inspired by landscape, energy, connection, history and sound and how they integrate together creates his distinctive imagery. Raphe uses an array of techniques and robust colours to convey his abstracted world.
Working with traditional oil making methods; creating walnut and stand oil from old masters’ recipes and grinding pigments to generate colours. His work is predominantly on board the grain of the timber often acting as a ground informing his practice. Playing with impasto marks and the viscosity of paint, the artist brings us to a strong connection with the expressionist painters of the past.
Raphe’s works are delightfully layered with colour and energetic marks. With pops of red, yellow and purple echoing blooming flowers, sweeps of blue indicating moving water and delightful scrawling’s of bird flight paths taking the viewer on a dance around the surface. The immediacy of the mark making is key here, building on the dynamics and energy of the work creating a thrilling zing of life, intimacy and emotional punch.
Coombes studied at Kingswood Art and Design School, Sydney then moving to regional NSW and finishing his studies at Orange Art and Design Campus. Moving from Newcastle to the Blue Mountains, then the Hunter Valley and currently northern NSW, Raphe’s work is held in many private collections across the country and internationally.
Raphe Coombes, Winter in Wytaliba, 123cm x 124cm framed, Oil & Graphite on board.
For this body of work my focus is to bring out the fundamental highlights of life. Becoming a father and dialing into the journeys and adventures of our lives so far, with an ever evolving response to landscape, a celebration of it’s diverse beauty.
Currently living in the small country town of Glen Innes NSW, I kept hearing whispers around the town of a place called WYTALABA, an old hippie commune in the Gibralter Ranges National Park, NSW.
In the middle of winter, I decided to pack my van and see what the fuss was about. After a short 40 minute drive and 15 minute decent down a steep winding road through old growth forests, I arrived at the camp ground, surrounded by mountains, on the banks of the incredibly powerful Mann River. This is where I’d paint for the next few days.
Once camp is set up I start walking the landscape, I spent hours listening to the bush music, watching the bird activity, collecting fungi, natural debris the river has consumed, comprehending the colors, walking the lookout tracks and talking to locals. They tell me 3 fires devastated the area in 2019, which explains the heavy rebirthing of the flora. I then sit and soak up the environment and wait.
The work this time immediately started to follow, like a kettle stuck at boiling point. With endless inspiration from the rawness and energy of the river and surroundings, the winter colors and frozen nights activating the fast development of the work.
Over the coming months I would return multiple times to explore with family, always drawing and painting on these trips, this place is special. I became extremely fixated on the Painter’s Hour, the last hour before sun down where tones change. The river sparkling in deep violet hues, smoothly water-shaped ancient rocks popping with ecstatic color, burnt tree trunks creating the shadow passages, with the petricor smell often present in the night air.
Through my practice, it is important to keep my hands on the materials. From cutting the timber to size, building the supports and finally to finish framing the works, my love and respect of materials is my entry point into my creative process.
Watching my son Banjo, drawing and painting with him reminds me of the famous Picasso Quote ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael and a lifetime to paint like a child’.
The freedom of marks, expression loose, untrained, pure and innate response to materials is absolutely beautiful. Kids make the best works and I aspire to re-invoke this freedom.
Landscape painting is to me, like being in a massive garden and responding to the energy and experience I find there. Reimagining the land to create my own visual world. This is a way to connect and engage with the landscape on a level that expands past my human self, something more, my higher self.
I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of this land, the Gumbainggir people and deep gratitude for allowing my stay on country.
Raphe Coombes, The Corner Store Gallery, photograph by Madeline Young.
Raphe Coombes, The Corner Store Gallery, photograph by Madeline Young.