Belgian born, American painter Raphaëlle Goethals grew up amidst the devotional works of Van Eyck and Van der Weyden, and was exposed early on to influential exhibitions at the Beyeler or the Maeght foundations; notably Francis Bacon and Piet Kirkeby. She received a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Atelier 75 in Brussels in 1980; and came to the Los Angeles in 1981 to further her education at the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, CA. Attracted to the vastness of the landscape and the quality of light, she relocated to New Mexico in 1994 where she developed her mature painting style.
Known for her signature layered encaustic and pigment abstractions, Goethals established her own unique and sophisticated vocabulary in the form of distinctive groups of paintings, which evolve concurrently. Morphing the expressive and the minimal, her work has been described by essayist and critic Arden Reed as being constructed of dichotomies. " Surface/depth, randomness/design, flesh/word, motion/stillness. Her paintings both enliven and compose us". Her work has been widely exhibited in the United States and Europe, and acquired by distinguished collections including the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, the Boise Art Museum and numerous selective private collections. She is represented by Gail Severn Gallery in Ketchum, ID, William Morrison Gallery in Kent, CT and Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas, TX.