La Raffa

Raffaela and I became conscious of one another in a big, black, shiny London cab, driving through central north London under the most enormous yellow full moon.

We had met a few hours earlier at the design book opening and the exhibition of Beatles photos Raffaella Guidobono had curated, but we were distracted from any significant communication by the sheer chaos and quantity of people around us. Extracted to this cab, with only a few people around, there was space to feel one another.

Staring out of the window, we both recognized the big moon as significant, and by doing so, each witchy woman recognized the other witchy woman as one for whom magic exists.

We were driven to an Italian architect's house party. The next time I saw Raffaela, I was hosting her in my Chelsea home for one night. I was the nanny in that home, but the family was away in France, and she just needed to crash for a night.

I loved her perfume. She had landed from the airport, already done some business, and came over to sleep at mine. We had breakfast together—muesli—over a whole dining table full of scraps of photographs, cutouts, and papers I was trying to make into a cohesive investigation and documentation book. This should have preceded the three paintings I was presenting for my final-year fine art degree assessment.

My paintings of beautiful young men, who looked as if they were somewhere between dead or in ecstasy, were inspired by Marlene Dumas, Dan Flavin’s lighting, and one by the Greek frieze at the British Museum. I had spent months painting the oil paintings, which I was confident in, while the mess on the table, which accounted for a large piece of the grade, was throwing me into desperation.

I was so desperate with this horrific mess that I resorted to kitchen magic and started making little potions—magic coffees full of roses I had plucked from the garden and herbs that I chanted over for luck, meant to keep me awake at night trying to figure out how to present this sheer mountain of stuff. Instead of keeping me awake, the pesticide on the roses spurred a rash all over my body—tiny pink spots that itched all through my last week of college.

Intrigued by the lack of sense, Raffa went to see my exhibition in Charing Cross and then left for Rome.

Since I have known her, Raffa has worn this sort of little mafia hat. She wears a lot of big rings, has sparkly brown eyes that shine with magic from black eyelashes and black eyeliner, and folds herself into several types of clothes that only Raffa can combine. Not very tall but full of spunk, La Raffa is always in movement. While you may have four projects, Raffa tends to have 84 projects on the go right now. And as she walks from place to place, magic occurs at such a rate that it is beyond belief. She meets such an array of people, introduces them, gets invited, gatecrashes, does several different businesses at the same time—so much so that even I, who came to know her very well, was unable to always get it. She is perpetually mobile, unceasing, unending, and you might meet her in New York, London, Milan, Paris, Rome, Venice, Palermo, Torino, Bogotá, Istanbul, Split—on a train, bus, plane, ferry, taxi, over dinner, at an opening, in a lecture, a cocktail party—but most often in exhibitions, for she is a genuine, deep heart felt and serious art connoisseur.

La Raffa, to me, was probably the single most important person in Rome. But because we became like sisters, like a duet, like a gush of water droplets present together in the sea of  activity, it is her I painted least of all. I am sorry about this. But we were both hopeless romantics, falling in love a lot, and those people needed to be painted. And we had to live off something, and painting, for me, was the only real source of money. Clients had to be painted, collectors, and groups of people I painted for projects had to be painted. She was my dealer, gallerist, curator, and guru of the most unpredictable, bizarre, art & magic-filled life.

She looked after me, introduced me to everyone, and spurred me on in every cheeky thought I had—to go and do it. And so Raffa made my confidence grow. She made sure I ate and had somewhere to sleep, and she delighted in me in a way that a mother might delight in her delicious, naughty, brilliant daughter. And her unending love made me grow confident. So at 22 I became an artist, who lived form art, right from my graduation, because I had Raffa at my side.