Paul Laffoley

Paul Laffoley (1935 – 2015) created an aesthetically very rich body of work characterized by his strong interest in systems and epistemological models. From the mid-1960s, he addressed mathematical questions, utopias, philosophy, and mysticism and spirituality in paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures in his typically precise and filigree style. He breaks each theme down into many specific aspects and sub-themes, producing graphic representations of these with manifold lines and branches. Most of his works are based on adjacent and conjoining diagrams, grids, languages, and forms, which Laffoley utilizes in order to create a complex web-like image serving the depiction of his own interpretations of different fields of knowledge. Viewing these works, all the connections the artist makes are only accessible to a certain degree. 

The title Pistis Sophia (2004 – 2006) derives from a text of the same name found mostly in Coptic Gnostic movements within Christianity. This text contains various doctrines that Jesus Christ is said to have taught his disciples eleven years after his resurrection. This work has no place in the classical canon of Christian teachings in the New Testament, but is the foundation of Gnostic cosmology. The subject of Laffoley’s work Pistis Sophia is a woman who was the personal physiotherapist of the artist in a medical institution in New York. She is depicted here with angel’s wings made of fire. Her hands are seen at the front of the picture with snakes around her wrists. The image is framed by text fields typical in Laffoley’s works and a curtain. On the left and the right are Venus and Mars, as contrasting forces. The construction of this image might suggest that this is a depiction of the star sign Sagittarius, linked with a female figure of Pistis Sophia. 

In Vedic astrology the first house is the house of the self. The picture The House of the Self (1971) describes the arrival of the soul in life on earth as a physical body — the becoming of the self, which is reflected in a crystal mirror standing behind everything. The parts of the body correspond to the five senses, the five elements, and the five lambs of the chakras. Beneath the images of the five parts of the body there is an abstract grid that represents the capacity of the spirit for mathematical thinking, or an understanding of numbers, which stands between being and nothingness. Laffoley saw this picture as an illustration of a belief system that can be almost read like a map, where far-eastern and Western faiths are mixed together. 

In The Gate of Brahman: The Cosmic Octave (1971) Laffoley describes a high state that can be achieved in meditation, whereby discursive thought ceases and the meditating person completely enters into the subject of the meditation. In this depiction, the seven chakras are presented as wheels, and set out from top to bottom in terms of their importance, forming what is called the ​“cosmic octave.” They are the centers of subtle energies that can be activated without physical movement. These energies are often called prana or kundalini. Read from bottom to top, they describe the journey to enlightened consciousness. The work True Liberation (1963) can be seen to address a related theme. Within its circular structure, various pairs of opposites (positive – negative, past – future, active – passive) are united, whereby Laffoley sees the act of bringing these contrasting pairs together as their dissolution that leads to the state of true liberation. Finally, in Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing (1964), being and becoming stand opposite each other. This work depicts the transition to the absolute, namely that which we usually call death. The question that the title evokes can be seen as a very general one that we can ask ourselves when we consider our own end.

In all of these works Laffoley links up different elements from various sources with a very gentle form of precision that results in a complex image. The result is in no way contrived, but rather very coherent in its own terms. That is not a coincidence — Laffoley often worked up to three years on one canvas. These works might all resemble each other in terms of strategy and composition, but they are nonetheless all individual works and not presented in sets or series. Each in its own way represents an attempt to find an answer to the world, a belief, or one single big question concerning human existence. This of course is undertaken from a very subjective perspective that draws on many different sources. The depth of the artist’s explorations is felt in these compositions, as he opens up the programming of his own thinking to us, or rather enacts it, mapping out his own belief system in each picture.


True Liberation, 1963
Oil, acrylic, and hand-applied vinyl type
140 x 137 x 7,6 cm

Pistis Sophia, 2004 – 2006
Oil and acrylic paint, vinyl press type, India ink, photo-collage on linen canvas with velvet drapes and magic mirror
264 x 151,8 x 16,5 cm

The House of the Self, 1971
Oil, acrylic, ink, vinyl lettering on canvas, painted wooden frame
173 x 50 x 50 cm

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing, 1964
Oil, acrylic, hand-applied vinyl letters, mixed media on canvas and wood
121,9 x 132,1 cm

The Gate of Brahman: The Cosmic Octave, 1971
 Oil, acrylic, hand-applied Vinyl letters on canvas
248,9 x 121,92 cm

All works courtesy KENT FINE ART, Ridgewood, New Jersey