Ken Raff (b. 1948) lives and works in Wodonga, Victoria, Australia.

Born in Gippsland Victoria in 1948, Ken Raff spent his teenage years by the seaside in Beaumaris Melbourne.

In 1971 he completed a Higher Diploma in Secondary Art/ Craft Teacher Training, majoring in sculpture, and moved to the country to teach art at High School in Echuca, Euroa and finally Wodonga.

In 1993 Raff resigned from the Secondary system to take up full time professional practice as a visual artist specializing in sculpture.

In 1997 Raff successfully completed his Post Graduate Diploma of Arts (Visual Arts)-Sculpture, through the Monash University, Gippsland Campus, Victoria.

Between 1997 and 2002 Raff worked as a sessional teacher, training student teachers at Latrobe University, Wodonga campus and at Riverina institute of TAFE, Albury, where he taught sculpture in the Visual Arts department.

Raff also tutored Aboriginals in the ATSIC Art Certificate and Diploma courses at Wodonga Institute of TAFE for 10 years until retiring in 2010.

In 2011/12 He completed an Advanced diploma in Art Therapy at the Phoenix institute of TAFE in Melbourne.

Since 1993 a key part of Raff’s art practice has involved designing and fabricating public art commissions within the North East Region.

Raff has exhibited extensively throughout Victoria and has held solo and group exhibitions in Melbourne, Canberra, Albury/Wodonga, Wangaratta, and Beechworth.

Over 45 years of work Raff’s drawings, paintings and sculptures have encompassed a variety of themes, subjects and styles, from figurative to abstraction to landscape.        

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.

His works give consideration to the relationship between the material, the physical and the spiritual with some inevitably having political overtones.

Through the incorporation of a variety of materials and techniques he aims to entice the viewer through personal memory and experience to create their own narrative.

Major themes in Raff’s works include: relationship with land and country, politics and war, Identity, dislocation and disconnection, the tension of opposites, the human condition, beauty, and the spiritual. His works reflect his personal journey through art, to make sense of, and giving meaning to, existence.

Sculptures are fabricated and carved using a variety of tools, mediums and materials.

Mixed media in a sculpture might include wood carving, metal forging, construction and fabrication, painting and the inclusion of found objects.

 

Painting

As with his sculptures over the years, Raff’s Paintings have covered a variety of themes, styles, and subjects from figurative to abstract to landscape. When painting en plein air he works on paper with watercolour, ink, gouache, and acrylic. On site works explore both the landscape immediately before him and the imagined aerial view of the same landscape with the aim of capturing the uniqueness of colour, texture, mood, history, and place.

Studio works include both abstract and landscape  draws on the bush and outback experiences to explore more layered and abstracted expressions of the Landscape. His paintings, while maintaining their original focus of connection with land, flora and fauna, and sense of place, now include anthropological, spiritual and symbolic elements connecting past with present, and human interaction with the environment.

In his more recent works Raff is exploring the more abstract dreamscape qualities of colour and shape in space.  While abstract in content, these works continue to use imagery and symbols common to his interpretation of the iconic Australian outback landscape and bush.