Oil painting of the artist Ken Raff who is recognized mostly by his extensive public sculptures displayed around North East Victoria, yet not many people know he was one of the key contributors to the creation of GIGS Art Gallery and Studios, a not-for-profit organisation run by volunteers. For over a decade, GIGS Artists Studios has been my safe haven where I have been able to explore my artistic practice and develop my own style, thanks to vital artists such as Ken Raff.
Raff’s works are strongly autobiographical and deeply spiritual, expressing through symbol, metaphor and whimsy, his inner responses to different aspects of the world he inhabits. Major themes in Raff’s works include: relationship with land and country, identity, dislocation and disconnection, the tension of opposites, the human condition, beauty, and the spiritual. The painting was directly inspired by Raff's sculptural forms while additionally suggesting this relationship between the material, the physical and the spiritual by the two faces moulded into one warped form.