In raising others through love, wisdom, strength and example of courage  to stand for truth, we help endow them with means by which all of us as humanity can rise to our highest purpose, fulfillment and above all, happiness

Ray Besserdin

We Raise to Rise

The White Peacock is the name of the gown I designed and created for creative collaboration with an internationally recognized art photographer, Vicky Papas-Vergara. This image won the Gold Award at the Las Vegas Wppi awards, USA

White Peacock 1- Fine Art Print

A flowing pattern of floral forms made of elements inspired by Bird of Paradise feathers.  Created as a peaceful decorative work in a monochrome of white cotton sculptured paper elements, the shapes of which are revealed only by natural light and shade. I come back to these energy flows in many of my abstract works because they carry the viewer into a pleasing sense motion with no start or finish.

Created in Arches 250gsm hot pressed, French textured new cotton paper

Corporate Commission for Crown, Melbourne

Floral Plumage

Swan males are extremely protective of their clutch of Cygnates.  It bears a touching symbolism and the focus was represent the bird in my “impressionist sculptured paper” styling capturing the movement and expression of readiness to defend itself and its brood.
Hahnemuhle 300gsm German new cotton, Arches 250gsm French hot-pressed new cotton and Japanese handmade kozo (Mulberry) papers.

In Private Collection

Swan – The Protector

The Ragianna Bird of Paradise, known for its most spectacular display feathers inspired this paper sculpture artwork, created in the “impressionist sculptured paper” signature style of the artist.
Set on a Spicers background stock with a colour wash setting reminiscent of being high in a rainforest canopy. The colours chosen are symbolic of the sun and marigold for sunny Australia. Freelife® Felt White 215gsm provided the base the red art and Stephen TM Chilled White 250gsm that for the yellow art to proudly showcase Spicers’ products.  The sculptures require handmade papers for their unilateral sculptural capabilities, stretch, unique textures and colours that make the “artist’s palette”.  Most are 100% cotton, hemp, flax or mulberry papers from varying sources in Europe and Asia.  The mulberry Koziyuki, Kozos and fine 8gsm Tengushu are from Japan. Corporate commission for Spicers Australia.

Merit Award, Yellow, Art Room Gallery, US '22
Honourable Mention, Animals Show,Grey Cube '22

Bird of a Feather #2

The Ragianna Bird of Paradise, known for its most spectacular display feathers inspired this paper sculpture artwork, created in the “impressionist sculptured paper” signature style of the artist.
Set on a Spicers background stock with a colour wash setting reminiscent of being high in a rainforest canopy. The colours chosen are symbolic of the Red for Japan, the land of the rising sun. Freelife® Felt White 215gsm provided the base the red art and Stephen TM Chilled White 250gsm that for the yellow art to proudly showcase Spicers’ products. The sculptures require handmade papers for their unilateral sculptural capabilities, stretch, unique textures and colours that make the “artist’s palette”.  Most are 100% cotton, hemp, flax or mulberry papers from varying sources in Europe and Asia.  The mulberry Koziyuki, Kozos and fine 8gsm Tengushu are from Japan.

Corporate commission for Spicers, Japan.

Birds of a Feather #1

Symbolic of a couple romantically spiralling upward in a flight of euphoric passion. The eagle represents the masculine and the hummingbird, the feminine. The swirling vortex suggests the rising, rotational motion of the bird’s rapturous arial dance.  The backing is convex to have no visible corners, enhancing the illusion of being suspended in flight.  Designed to fit a specially built niche commemorating the client’s first – paper – anniversary, situated right in the front entrance of their home.
Sculptured from Hahnemuhle (Germany) 300gsm cotton NOT, Arches (France) 310gsm cotton, hot-pressed, mould-made papers for the body armatures with a variety of handmade, fine weighted, mulberry papers for the many hundred individually sculptured feathers. The eyes are layered with the top formed of 4gsm Kozo tissue, treated with methylcellulose to give almost glass-like transparency and life.  The swirls are from a stiff 70gsm transparent, wood fibre stock.
In private collection.

Rapturous Ascent

Created on commission for Laurina Lodge, located in Heyfield, Victoria, AUS  The artwork greets visitors as they enter the reception.  The subject is a native shrub known Pincushion Hakea, Hakea laurina by its scientific name.  H. laurina is characteristic for the bushland surrounding Heyfield.
Created in a variety of archival mould-made cotton papers with Asian handmade stocks. The work even features ants tending nectar on the flowers, as is observed in nature.  Colours are created with ink tints and washes.

Hakea laurina

I love the expressiveness of hands and use them here to metaphorically express the similarity between the challenges of our endeavours and the flow of rivers.  Life is never a straight forward path. We reach forward but are faced with continual obstacles.  To overcome them and reach our destination, we decide directions, learn what works and what doesn’t, try this way, then that way; reach for help or offer ours to others in turn. Persistence prevailing, incrementally we find our way. 
In private collection 
2022- Director’s Choice Prize ART FLUENT, Boston, "WITHIN"  
2018 Winner People's Choice Prize|National Works on Paper / MPRG    2017 Finalist Banyule Works on Paper

Endeavour’s Hands

As a lover of nature, but living in the city, I observe people’s gardens as I go for my exercise walks. They bring peace and tranquility apart from a serene balance to city living.  One garden near my gallery caught my attention and inspired me with its magnificent, tall, smooth, white Lemon Scented Eucalypt. It reigns like a hand reaching triumphantly skyward, defending a mostly native garden, where amongst other things, stands a stout Grass Tree, Kangaroo Paws, Melaleuca and a single very attractive, Japanese Maple seems quite out of place. All created in special handmade papers, uniquely there are some actual Japanese Maple leaves embedded in the making of one of the papers.
In private collection.

Beneath its Reign

A recent trip to India and a visit to the Kolkata Museum inspired this piece.  The structures and textures of huge fossilized remains of long gone Ordovician marine creatures on display, called Nautiloids, fascinated and begged me to create an abstract from my impression.
Formed from a variety of German mould-made and Asian handmade papers based on various plant fibres to give the organic textures and natural colours.
Framed in raw Tasmanian Oak hardwood finished with beeswax and acrylic glazing.
In private collection.

Ancient Origins

In Melbourne’s inner-city heart are the beautiful Royal Botanic Gardens. It’s a dominion of majestic ancient oaks, figs, conifers with other grand giants surrounded by a rich diversity of magnificent green nobility. Here, at one with nature, it’s a place of rest away from the pressures and stress of our daily lives where we can be in touch with our own inner self and belonging together. Animals too, inhabit the riches of this environment.  Ferdinand von Mueller, the garden’s first director, whose commemorative bust looks on would be proud of the treasures today filling these truly royal botanic gardens.  Sculptured from Hahnemuhle (Germany) 300gsm cotton NOT,  Arches (France) 310gsm cotton hot-pressed mould made papers and a variety of handmade Hemp, Flax and Kozo (Mulberry) papers from  Awagami (Japan) and other Asian sources, some as light as 4gsm.

Green Dominion

High-level business dealing “Suits” in blue and grey represent two tycoons locked in an iron-clad handshake like hook and tow, firmly pinioned together in contract.  Everything about them is cold steel polished and formal. The abstracted face-to-face heads in the background show stern, implacable, stoic dispositions. No place for soft-at-heart. 
A metaphor about dealing in the tough game of high stakes business.  
Study the piece up close you will see the fabric texture, and every thread of the sewn buttonholes.  The steel looks like polished chromium, but it is entirely sculptured in paper, hand coloured with permanent inks.  The background is hot pressed Arches of France 300gsm watercolour paper overlaid with 8gsm Japanese Tengushu.  The hands are of mould-made hot-pressed calendared stocks of varying weights.  The threads are created by fine slicing of paper strips.

Secure Handshake

I do not labour my sketches, I leave them loose and when a shape I like appears, I immediately begin visualising it in 3D. It’s natural for me to find myself scrawling forms that somewhere in my life relate to memories of objects in nature.  
From my palette of the varieties of papers I store, I consider the textures and colours that might suit, and start tearing and moulding them into shape, roughly based on the preliminary sketch, and just watch what happens. 
“Eroded Blue” evolved from the memory of something geologic I might have found lying on a plain with wind swept eroded forms exposed to the elements, revealing beautiful textures and remnant shapes like something bearing a crystal coated inner face.
Made from a variety of German mould-made and Asian recycled, handmade papers bearing a mixture of shredded inclusions.
Framed in a limed Tasmanian Oak hardwood base fitted with a box of acrylic glazing.

Eroded Blue

I often go to where I can be at one with nature.  Nothing grounds and calms me the same way.  More than ever in the recently stressed times I find myself needing to be surrounded by trees, flowers, birds, and the ever-present activities of small creatures like bees, butterflies, and dragonflies. I love to observe them, and their forms fascinate me. It inspired to create this piece in the pure natural shades of the handmade papers I use as my palette; papers made from fibres sourced from nature like the subject matter depicted. There’s an integral relationship between my medium and objects in the composition that helps preserve the connection with the natural world from which I draw such valuable peace and centering. We all need a little of tranquility.Sculptured from Hahnemuhle (Germany) 300gsm cotton NOT, Arches (France) 310gsm cotton hot-pressed mould made papers and a variety of handmade Hemp, Flax and Kozo (Mulberry) papers from Awagami (Japan) and other Asian sources.

Tranquility

A stroll in the Australian Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne, Part 3/4.
Sculptured from Hahnemuhle (Germany) 300gsm cotton NOT, Arches (France) 310gsm cotton hot-pressed mould made papers and a variety of handmade Hemp, Flax and Kozo (Mulberry)papers from  Awagami (Japan).

Merit Award -"Yellow" - Art online exhibition | Art Room Gallery | USA 2022
Merit Award - Botanicals Competition / Grey Cube Gallery USA 2021
Silver Medal - Professional Artists Competition - Mondial Art Academia 2019| France
Second Place - Botanicals Exhibition - The Art Room Contemporary Gallery 2019

To Seaside

A stroll in the Australian Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne, part 2/4. In entering these gardens, a left turn on the pathway takes us northward past a magnificent Ironbark stand followed by Box and Peppermint Eucalypts, and the distinctive Scribbly Gums with their bark decorated by abstract washes, like paintings. A wonderous landscape of cycads and ferns that once dominated Gondwana in the Palaeozoic Era, 180 million years ago. Sculptured from Hahnemuhle (Germany) 300gsm cotton NOT, Arches (France) 310gsm cotton hot-pressed mould made papers and a variety of handmade Hemp, Flax and Kozo (Mulberry) papers from Awagami.

Finalist Stanthorpe Art Prize 2021
Gold Medal for Creativity - Professional Artists Competition - Mondial Art Academia, France 2018 
First Place - Nature Exhibition - LightSpaceTime Gallery Florida 2018.

The Path to Gondwana

white

yellow

orange

purple

dark blue

green

light blue

brown

black

Acrylic

Aquatint

Canvas

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Clay

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Embroidery

Graphite

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Very Small

The Red Sands Garden

Portrait of Anne Ducros - French Jazz Vocalist

Portrait of Sven Libaek - Australian-Norwegian Distinguished

Portrait of Don Burrows - Australian Jazz Woodwind Legend

Be inspired by artworks created in the natural beauty of one of humanity's oldest and most enduring mediums. 

All of what you discover here is sculptured by the artist from sheet-formed papers sourced from Europe and Asia.


About Ray Besserdin
32-year career, recognised internationally with 35 awards to date, including two gold from New York, and “Gold Medal for Creativity” from Mondial Art Acadamie, France.  Born to artist parents, entirely self-taught techniques of sculpturing dimensionally with only sheet-formed papers, much like bas-relief. Papers are mostly handmade cotton and mulberry stocks from Europe and Asia. Works range from miniature to over 6 by 3.8 metres, and abstract to ultra-realistic. Inspired mostly by painters of the French Impressionist Period and developed a technique to achieve expressiveness using torn papers build up three-dimensionally, where they used paint two dimensionally. Whilst his works can be abstract to figurative ultra-realism, he calls his signature style “Impressionist Sculptured Paper” for its use of torn, raw pieces arranged to form the subject matter.  While likeness is important, the focus is to capture emotion, life, and expression over realism, yet always revealing the character of the papers from which the subjects are sculptured. Nature is his favourite subject matter. Works hang in private and corporate collections in London, Munich, Manhattan, Tokyo, New Zealand and throughout Australia.  

Ray is Australian Ambassador for Mondial Art Academia, France.

Ray Besserdin Paper Sculpture Artist- Available Works

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