Introduction by Art Critic Dr. Dalia Hakker-Orion
The artist Rafaela-Shoshi Shporer was introduced to the world of painting in 2005 in an Art Therapy class while recovering from cancer.
Rafaela graduated from Haifa University in Medical Administration and has worked for more than 30 years in this field. During these years she broadened her education and discovered the realms of the spiritual world and theories. She begun to study paintings, but felt that she wanted to search her own way. Her inner strength, vitality, and the discovering of the artistic path helped her to recover from her illness and to find a wide area to express herself. Rafaela has also created in the last 8 years an extraordinary line of Jewelry which reflects her esthetic sense combined with her originality with her beliefs and the knowledge she gained in spiritual theories. She is connected especially to the Far-Eastern and Indian philosophies.
Her way of creating is automatic, intuitive and done in a state of trance. When she begins to paint she doesn’t know what the result will be and only after the first trance-like stage, she looks at it and continue to draw. This is a “Catharsis” process that relieves her from the burdens and the secrets of the past manifest them in a concrete form and in the process she purifies herself. In her words: “I am making peace with myself and with the environment”. In the creative process she finds, in contrast to reality and her past, the freedom to do what she wants without any restrictions and directions. That is why she uses, aside the conventional painting brushes, other gadgets and especially her nails and finger tips. With her fingers she pinches, scratches, flirts and dances on the upper layer of the paint, in order to achieve harmony and uniform structural appearance.
Her rich and cheerful colors disguises the deep fears, uncertainties and wanderings and the black spots covering some of them are, on the one hand a rain of blessing but on the other hand they represent the bounded, limited and restricted past. Hidden encrypted messages that even the creator herself doesn’t know about them until they emerge to the surface, are buried underneath the colorful dense layers of colors that transmit strength, fluidity, abundance and pleasure.
The structural richness is enhanced by additional materials as bandages, beads and modeling paste. The painting, like the bandages is soothing the wounds of the past and paints them with cheerful colors.
From her paintings which are reminiscent of rich textured and colorful jewels, carpets or woven baskets echoes primordial notes. She is a free spirit connected directly to the individual and communal subconscious. Unintentional Youngian archetypes, imaginative animals and magical signs are directly connected to the communal subconscious source of images. In her intuitive way of creating while completely involved emotionally, she begins to work with the material-color, and only in later stage she completes, retouches and stresses the images.
In her paintings she embraces the whole world from the prehistoric times to present day, from primitive cultures to modern ones. They contain subjects related to: nature, reproduction and fertility, creation and creating, and symbols related to cultures prevailing in central and South America. The main source of inspiration is nature, representing an eternal element with its repeating cycles. Her descriptions manifest her vivid imagination from which she brings up naïve and decorative shapes.
There are versatile compositions: some paintings are seen from above and others from the side there are symmetrical and asymmetrical paintings. Some are surrounded by a painted decorative frame and in others the painted shapes reach the border of the canvas and cut by it.
The importance of bringing formative and textural order into the emotional and dynamic chaos is manifested by covering the upper surface with tiny points like in the Aboriginal paintings, creating uniform textural stylization, the placing of the colors and the resonance they create. All these measurements slightly moderate and bring
Since she begun to paint she gained more confidence and discovered new realms, systems and subjects. In the last period she begun to paint in series, increased the dimensions of her paintings, painted more figures, added details and features to her characters and developed a stylistic connection with the American “Action Painters”, especially Jackson Pollock.
There is no doubt that the painting process acts as a catharsis to an turbulent inner world and the bright colors covers wanderings, past deficiencies and provides liberation from inner inhibitions. Turning to the spiritual side neutralizes borders and enables connections with cultures and people and the work process is self Shamanism. The seasonality, fertility and creativity existing in nature are her source of inspiration. Nature is her safe haven and in it she finds the proof that it is possible to overcome all obstacles and move on.