Raffael and I didn't know each other before he arrived at Colstoun in the summer of 2024. However, I feel like I've found a kindred spirit. We talked long and hard about the complexities of the art market and its fickle nature, we talked about his upcoming show at Saatchi Gallery in conjunction with Beers Gallery and about travelling and the world. I had been connected with him via Jack from BWG gallery in London. Bader's work was different to what I had previously worked with; Raffael's natural talent lies in extracting the most crucial block elements from a composition and transforming them into meaningful landscapes.
for information on available works from Raffael, please get in touch with Mackie via email: mclean@colstoun.co.uk
One key element or perhaps a skill that Bader possesses is the ability to make his landscapes appear almost like abstract works in themselves. Having a person nearby who can explain and transform the blocks into a 'real place' grounds the work in the real world and allows you to view all of Bader's paintings through his eyes.
'Calm Lake in a Whistling Wind', seen to the left, is a wonderful example of how to extract elements from a Raffael Bader work. In the foreground, you see light textural tones, which are the water upon a Scottish lake in the Lammermuir Hills above Colstoun Estate. Bader's ability to create strong, forceful textures in oil paint transports you to a windy day, feeling the cold air upon your face.
Next, we move on to the brown, loosely painted shoreline and hills that confine the lake. The area in which Raffael painted this work is a heather-clad moorland, and so it remains relatively brown for much of the year, only bursting into bright purple for the last weeks of August and September.
Directly in the centre of the painting, we see blue, highly textured markings that are contrasted with green and red shapes that jut into one another. These are the trees on the island placed right in the centre of the composition. Above them, purple skies and very limited cloud colour.
Of course, there is a strong possibility that you very quickly saw this just by glancing at the work and reading the title. However, I hope that my simple explanation will allow you to see the depth and shape of the other works we are exhibiting by Raffael, where the compositional elements are more subtle and the shapes slightly less bold.
Most artists that come to Colstoun focus their time and energy on absorbing the area around the house and victorian parkland, Raffael was in the position with his own VW camper van to explore all of Scotland. Somedays Raffael would stay around East Lothian exploring from the Lammermuir Hills down to Tantallon Castle next to North Berwick. The hills of Scotland fascinated Raffael. The view from Broun's Hill (the highest elevation point on Colstoun) looking out onto the Lammermuir Hills inspires Bader's work 'The Hills Still Stretch Slowly'. Our unique geography in East Lothian generally does relatively strange things to the weather. We have the North Sea to the North and East and the Hills to the South and West, meaning we are trapped in a microclimate. The Lammermuir hills are an extended range of undulating lowland valleys that run for the entire length of the county, forming a solid line on the horizon. From Broun's Hill, you are close enough to see that it isn't a single long hill but many smaller valleys and hills closely meshed together to form a solid long range. Using a palette similar to that of 'Calm Lake in a Whistling Wind', Bader makes extracting the elements from 'The Hills Still Stretch Slowly' very straightforward.
'Path To The Hill Traprain Law' is a beautiful, intimate painting; Traprain Law is a solid geographical element of East Lothian, serving as a centre point for the entire county. Everyone believes that their view of the law is the best. From the west looking east like we do at Colstoun, the Law appears over the Colstoun Estate fields of wheat and barley. The composition in this painting is not all that it seems. However, Bader has extracted elements from a Ronald Cavalla painting in Colstoun House.
Although Cavalla wasn't particularly famous, the story of his work captivated Raffael. Born in the 1940's Cavalla was obsessed with the old masters, making numerous paintings that were homages to the works of the old masters, through a career in London he learned the techniques of the artists who had come before him especially the dutch masters. Cavalla would eventually have 4 of his works printed in large editions and distributed worldwide, having them glazed with oil. This gave the impression of owning an old master for a fraction of the price.
With this story of Cavalla's work, Bader extracted the framing elements (all that you see in darker tones on the painting) from one of the Colstoun Cavalla paintings and used them to surround Traprain Law. In his own way, Bader extracted elements of two objects/sights that are quintessentially 'Colstoun' and combined them together, making an imagined space grounded in reality.
BIOGRAPHY:
Leipzig based visual artist, Raffael Bader, graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts, Leipzig, Germany in 2019. He grew up in the south of Germany, lived in the north for a while until it brought him to the east. The change of location, which is also reflected in his longer stays abroad (Australia, Asia and Latin America, among others), has a decisive influence on his work. Bader’s paintings deal with his view of a world full of tensions, while these tensions hold our world together. In 2020 he received the Denkzeit grant from the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and in 2021 the work scholarship from Stiftung Kunstfond Bonn. In 2020 he began exhibiting internationally, including in Switzerland and the USA. Bader has exhibitied in Germany, Switzerland & the UK in over 20 group shows in past 5 years with galleries and institutes inc. Saatchi Gallery, MDBK, ZFK, Art City Works & Blue Shop Cottage, alongside 5 solo shows in Germany and the US with galleries inc. Galerie Potemka & Rocket Science.
Website: https://raffaelbader.de/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raffaelbader/
Images are Courtesy of Enari Gallery Amsterdam
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