Today we’d like to introduce you to Raphaele Cohen-Bacry.
Hi, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story? Can you also talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I came to Los Angeles almost 20 years ago. I had traveled from France to NYC several times before, including on 9/11. I was born and raised in Paris, and that is where I got most of my training in painting and printmaking at Les Ateliers Beaux-Arts and La Grande Chaumière, while earning a performing arts degree from l’École de la Rue Blanche.
I also completed the 6-year pharmacy school program and studied pharmacology, botany, chemistry and more, with fascination. Since I decided to become a professional artist, I have remained very much involved in phytotherapy and other natural medicines as a way to preserve or restore health. I even design formulations to address specific conditions. My interests have always been very diverse and I never was able to limit my mind and curiosity to one area. All the different domains that help better understand the mystery of life are captivating to me. Both the artist and the scientist have a creative mind and there is little difference between arts and sciences if you consider them as ways to enrich yourself and escape mediocrity. I often feel like an alchemist: looking at my studio and all the paintings, the collages, the projects, the research, I see a laboratory where I conduct experiments to create my own images. Being an artist is more than a career, it is a way of looking at life and a way to conduct yourself as a free human being. And no, it has not been particularly easy and I don’t expect it to change. What I think is that I have more practice, I am less naive and in a way, stronger, so challenges do not intimidate me as much and I accept them as part of being human. Life is a succession of obstacles, some you overcome, some you don’t, and hopefully you change for the better along the way. As painful as it sometimes gets, I do not see any other way to improve.
And it may be that improving is just going back to your true nature, to your core, the way it was before you had to conform and align with the majority, just to get along. Art often helps me cope with difficult or unpleasant situations. Anything that I can turn into a piece of art or use to develop my practice is not completely lost.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Although I am mainly a painter, by training and by choice, I experiment with different techniques and new materials all the time. In addition to painting and collage, I do assemblage and video art. I make these very short videos that are poetic and disconcerting and allow me to work with sound. My curiosity is almost limitless and the way I approach art has changed over the past few years and even more so since 2020.
I now consider a project first, the space, the public I might connect with, and then I select the medium and turn it into a personal means to achieve my vision. It is a different way of proceeding, very liberating in some ways, despite the external constraints. Before that, I was making my paintings in my studio, mostly in isolation, and then I would find a venue or an opportunity to show them as a series.
I still do that, but not exclusively. The latest example is an installation I did for Cerritos College Art Gallery that runs a program every year called “Window Dressing”. They select a few artists to do an installation in a large window case visible from outside. It is a fantastic place to experiment and to reach young people, students who might be part of the next generation of artists. Thanks to my experience with cardboard, I made a series of 40 in. diameter rose windows (“rosaces”), using cardboard and metallic paper. Each rosace references a different symbolic pattern, from the main rose window of Notre Dame de Paris to the Taoist yin/yang to the Buddhist Dharma wheel and the mystic Flower of Life. They are suspended from the ceiling, and seem to be floating in the air. I very much like the way they are reflecting light off of their colored metallic surfaces and project them onto the walls behind. Last time we spoke I was starting a series of large “make-believe collage” paintings. I am pursuing this experiment and just had a solo exhibit of 20 of them in Encino. Collage has definitely influenced my painting, in a fresh way. I believe art belongs to everybody and can appeal to all as long as they are exposed to it and willing to pay attention. My work wants to reach and speak to those you are art savvy as well as those who do not have a lot of experience looking at art. My pieces have several layers of understanding and nothing pleases more than being able to cause emotions and a sense of closeness in many different individuals.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
What makes me happy is what keeps me interested, it is overcoming a big obstacle, or coming up with a great idea to respond to a situation or a project. I guess I am always trying to reinforce my uniqueness. It seems a little bit self centered but there is definitely something like that at the center of my search. It probably is part of the creative process as well. For example I am preparing a touring exhibition of large “collaged” playing cards in Las Vegas and I am really looking forward to installation day in such an ideal setting. I thought it would be more telling and efficient to just share a list of things that have an immediate effect on me and make me happy: Observing Koi fishes swimming in a pond The sound of a breeze in tree foliages Entering a painting exhibition, or starting book, with the feeling it is going to be fantastic and change my perception of life Witnessing an act of gratuitous kindness Getting rid of a minor health issue, helping a someone feel better Watching birds is very relaxing to me. It is an easy way to get in touch with the living and with nature. Birds are often present in my work. There is a place I know where many migrant birds come. I particularly love wild geese and I get goose bumps (ahah) when they fly in a squadron, very very low, just above my head. In such moments I can almost sense how it feels to fly When a small water leak fixes itself (too seldom) Looking at Cargo ships in and out of a port. I love Friday evenings, the beginning of the Shabbat. I went for my dental check up and the dentist could not find anything wrong Finding out a nasty neighbor is moving out
Contact information:
- Website: https://www.raphaelecohenbacry.com/
- Instagram: @raphaelecohenbacrystudio
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