Raph James

I am an artist, a storyteller of line, colour and movement. Working in Naarm (Melbourne), I create linear abstract paintings that feel like moments suspended — clean, deliberate lines, vibrant palettes, compositions that invite you to pause, lean in, and experience.

My New Zealand Polynesian heritage and my experience as a trans woman shape the way I see and feel the world. My paintings carry that lived truth: the tension between light and shadow, between belonging and becoming, between connection and transformation. I see abstraction not as removal of identity, but as an offering of it — a place where identity is fluid, alive, and full of possibility.

In my studio I choose each hue, each line, each space with intention. I am interested in the places where colour converges with identity, where the echo of ancestry meets the immediacy of now. I hope these works become silent companions — invitations to the viewer to reflect on how they move through identity, how they connect to culture, and how transformation offers its own quiet power.