FOREVER RAQUEL
“Gateless gates” is perhaps the most transparent of koans, for such are the separating non-separations between heaven and earth. Between life and death. And Raquel, a devoted meditator, more than understanding it, she knew. And layer after layer rendered the ineffable immersed in coats of black.
Many many years ago Raquel phoned asking how I would put in Spanish a sentence that she had formulated in English: “For me a painting is finished when the surface merges with the ground and the ground becomes groundless.”
Impossible to translate in all its rich ambiguity. After knocking around for a while, we came up with the following: “Para mí un cuadro está terminado cuando la superficie se confunde con el fondo y el fondo se funde con el Todo.” It didn’t come close but then it also did.
I miss those long, memorable conversations with Raquel along decades. She was a profound, unassuming thinker as much as an artist. And the greatest of friends.
I traveled to New York for the last time in October 2024 and visited her to learn the sad news. But Raquel was so whole, so accepting, still immersed in her art: such a consolation. She showed me her personal dictionary, her emotional interpretation of everyday words, and I wrote “forever” in the inscription of my new book. And so Forever became our mantra, and we both mentioned it as long as we could connect over the phone.
Forever crossing the gateless gates.
—Luisa Valenzuela
