Raoul Middleman high desert gallery

High Desert Gallery

The landscape of the West has always fascinated me since childhood, such as memories of the Saturday Western movies with Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy and later a two-year stint as a ranch-hand in Montana. The opportunity to paint the Southwest and all its monumental glory has allowed me to collate fantasy with observational verity.

Raoul Middleman pastels gallery

Pastels Gallery

Pastels are pure color dustings, like the pollen on flowers, all glorious inspissated emanations dazzling the surface of appearance. These pastels were made along the banks and flats of the Susquehanna River where it joins the Deer Creek.

Raoul Middleman World Trade Center gallery

World Trade Center Gallery

In the spring of 2001, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council invited me as Artist-in-Residence to the 92nd floor of The World Trade Center. The bank of windows overlooked downtown Wall Street to the bridges along the East River connecting to Brooklyn. I painted 21 paintings. A few months after my residency ended, the first insidious plane came through those very windows.

Raoul Middleman drawings gallery

Drawings Gallery

Drawing begins in blindness; hand, eye, mind snatch fragments from the world of appearances.Each take is a collision with that world. It is a history of accidents which is fated, a tension between suspense and resolution.A good drawing creates Sight a mirror of the world in which we recognize ourselves.

Raoul Middleman horse gallery

Horse Drawings Gallery

As a kid I hung around stables and groomed with curry comb and brush many a horse, rode jumpers and exercised racehorses. In the process the horse's anatomy - withers, fetlock, hock - became instinctive, enabling me to draw the compact energy of horses in action quickly. These drawings are from the racetrack, in the early morning hours, when the horses are taken out for their ritual gallop.