Artist Biography
Raphe Coombes is a prolific artist from Northern NSW, His work encompasses Painting and Drawing

Coombes’ work is often associated with art movements such as: Neo Expressionism, Naive Art, Art Brut, Abstract Expressionism and Impressionism.  

His Artistic practice is distinguished by its deeply autobiographical nature and rich personal symbolism. Influenced by the term ‘Memento Mori’ traditions,  rendered through a playful naive lens.

Coombes’ paintings balance lightness with underlying existential weight. Symbols emerge and dissolve, narratives begin but refuse to settle with meaning differed, this tension gives rise to a body of work that’s deeply personal and Universally resonant.

Coombes’ works operate as visual meditations rather than answers, echoing the instinctive ways children interpret the world, curious, fragmented and unburdened by certainty. Connecting the importance of fatherhood and healing oneself through the work, with a visual of clear abstraction with purpose, feeling in paint, a call from a higher self only reachable by surrender.

Studied at Newcastle Art School and Nepean Arts and Design Centre Western Sydney, his works are found in many collections locally and Overseas.