Rafael E.M. (b. 1979, Baku, Azerbaijan) is a Manchester based abstract painter working primarily in acrylic on canvas. His practice began, in his own words, as "a late night escape," painting in the quiet hours after everyone else had gone to bed, before growing into a full-time career.

Rafael's paintings are built from layered, chromatic fields of colour set against dynamic, gestural brushwork, worked with palette knives, unconventional tools and a hand mixed texture paste of his own recipe. His technique is often as additive as it is subtractive, with paint built up in layers, and then, partly removed, forming windows and portholes that carve through vivid and explosive jungles of hues, movements and textures. Jackson Pollock remains a guiding influence, and Rafael returns periodically to a Pollock inspired mode of working, freer and more heavily layered than usual, drawn to what he describes as "the beauty of movement and spontaneity." Music plays a direct role in the studio, shaping the tempo and flow of a piece as it develops; by his own account, painting can begin in a state of anxious uncertainty before, gradually, "the paint starts to flow, the noise disappears," and the work seems to find its own way through.

Across his work, two threads recur. First, a sense of place rendered as feeling rather than likeness, paintings built not to depict a landscape but to capture what it felt like to stand inside it, its colour, light and atmosphere. The second is more personal: an ongoing interest in instinct, self-trust and resistance to outside expectation, work made by deliberately breaking his own rules and trusting what he feels over what's expected of him. 

Rafael is represented by galleries in Australia and the UK. His work is commissioned for private collections internationally, and he has collaborated with Manchester based streetwear label Street Cartel, as well as ScrawlrBox UK as a featured artist.