How I Made This: Raquel Philippe (CFA’26)
Raquel Philippe paints childhood memories of home—both her own, and those of her Haitian parents.
Raquel Philippe (CFA’26)
On memory, heritage, and the joy of painting
How I Made This is a series from BU Today that explores how Boston University students create their works of art—be it a musical composition, a fiber sculpture, a short story, a painting, and beyond. Are you part of BU’s creative community? Tell us about your work here.
Raquel Philippe paints memories of home. In some of her brightly hued oil paintings, the viewer is dragged through an electrified collage of skylines, subway cars, pedestrians, fire escapes, and overflowing trash cans. In other canvases, home is a melange of white sand beaches, juicy leaves, and sweltering heat. Each piece is suffused with a nostalgia that seems to stem from an intimate experience—sour-faced toddlers in Winnie the Pooh pajamas, a child on her father’s shoulders walking by the seashore, sandaled feet on a wooden dance floor, a child and her mother in matching long coats smiling on the sidewalk.
So where is home for Phillipe? And which memories are hers?
“I grew up in Rockland County, New York,” Philippe (CFA’26) explains. It’s a suburban area, she adds, not far from New York City. “But my parents’ home was Haiti—specifically Port-au-Prince. Their memories of growing up were different from mine, but I still really connect to their childhood stories.”
To reconcile these dual images of home, Philippe explores, on canvas, themes of youth, identity, family, and belonging. But as a student in Boston University’s College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts MFA painting program, she’s beginning to feel ready for change. Her work has started to lean more on foundational elements like color and shape, veering away from representation and requiring more observation from the viewer.
“I want people to work to understand these memories,” she says, “since they aren’t their own.”
Philippe has decided to take her work in a more abstract direction, allowing her to play more with vibrant, joyful colors that evoke Haiti’s tropical climate.
There are figures in Philippe’s newer paintings, but they’re not as easy to spot as they used to be. “I want people to work to understand these memories,” she says.
Philippe in her College of Fine Arts studio.
Using her memories as her guide, Philippe says the feelings she experiences most as she paints are joy and reminiscence.
“How I Made This”
BU Today: What are you working on right now?
Raquel Philippe: I’ve been taking on a big change in my artwork, and I’m doing a lot more experimentation. Instead of being so literal with my artwork, I want to take a step back and shift the details into something that can be understood by me, but takes other people a little more time to figure out. It makes them have to look at the artwork a little bit more.
BU Today: Why the big change?
Raquel Philippe: It’s related to the critiques and studio visits I’ve had during school. There are mostly second-year students in this program, and they’ve said that their artwork has changed throughout the semesters. I didn’t think it was going to happen to me, but it’s already starting. I’ve seen a big shift because of the critiques, inspiration, and suggestions from professors and the other students I’m around.
BU Today: What role does memory play in your work?
Raquel Philippe: My artwork this semester is still based on memory, but it’s not quite as sharp as how I painted it last semester. For me, it comes in flashes, or it’s pretty hazy, so I decided to emulate that on canvas. It takes a minute for you to find certain figures in [the canvas]. I think about how I would remember the details of a certain story: I can’t give you 100 percent of the details, but I can give you the gist.
BU Today: How does that influence your technical process?
Raquel Philippe: My technical process is similar to my memory process. First I’ll lay down a composition with line work, which I’ll paint on the canvas, then I layer very thin shapes on top so that I can still see the canvas underneath. Then I’ll layer them continuously until I almost lose my initial composition, and then I bring it back in pieces: forming a leg or a face in a way that’s very hard to tell if it’s still there—similar to how I try and remember things. In the past, I used to use a lot of collage work, where I would cut out printouts that I took from photo albums. Now I just focus on one initial photo, and try distorting it, as if I’m trying to remember that moment.
BU Today: What emotions are coming up for you as you paint?
Raquel Philippe: I would say these memories that come up for me are joy and satisfaction—and reminiscence, especially. I wanted to shift to more vibrancy and brighter colors [for that reason]. I’m not trying to evoke an emotion for anyone else: these emotions are for me, because either I know these memories firsthand or they’re being told to me.
I see laughter, I see comedy. I see joy.
This Series
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