Gabriele T. Raacke • Paintings

"Using brilliant, luminous colors, Raacke's images depict circus people caught in a surreal, dream-like world of their own. A clown sleeps sitting in a chair, blissfully unaware of the huge tiger angrily prowling the room. A trapeze artist swings high over a meadow, rather than under a circus tent.

A stilt-walker practices her art in a deserted street. A room has the usual middle-class accessories, such as a table, a chair, or a vase of flowers, but no roof. The performers, however, seem unaware of the oddity of their circumstances. And, while they inhabit the same frames as their animal colleagues, each travels in their own space, contained in their own personal worlds.

By employing the technique of reverse painting on glass, the artist forces the viewer to look through the glass, as through a window, to catch her subjects in the private, contemplative or anxious moments of time just before or just after a performance, which are just as significant as the performance itself. The performers may or may not be aware of their unexpected audience."

Source: Kenny Mann, Sag Harbor Writer describing Ms. Raacke's one-woman show at Ashawagh Hall in East Hampton in the summer of 2001.