About the artist:
Ralph Garafola, formerly of Warren Township, NJ (B.12.4.1929 to D. 4.4.2019) artist, educator, and author, passed away at Tidewell Hospice of Lakewood Ranch, Fla.,. at 89 years of age on Thursday, April 4, 2019. He was raised in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, became a New Jersey resident in 1962, and lived in Warren for 45 years. Mr. Garafola started his career as a draftsman in New York City for Armor Engineering. He studied at the Art Students League of New York for over seven years with Frank J. Reilly, former art commissioner for the City of New York. Mr. Garafola, a Korean War veteran, was an Army combat photographer. He worked as a commercial illustrator in the advertising industry and opened his own studio, Ralph Garafola Studio, in Newark, N.J. For more than 65 years, he was a self-employed commercial illustrator, photo retoucher, and fine artist. Mr. Garafola retired as a commercial illustrator in 1990, and continued painting portraits and landscapes as well as teaching up until April of 2019. He taught at the duCret School of Art, Plainfield, N.J., and in Florida at the Sarasota Art Center, Longboat Key - Ringling College of Art and Design, the Art Center Manatee and Art Expressions by the Bay in Sarasota. Mr. Garafola also had students he tutored privately. He continues to be represented by his daughter, Lorraine Garafola, in the art world for selling his paintings and his books on art. Ralph had a love of big game hunting out West and at the Arctic Circle, was the past treasurer of the Warren Sportsmen Club in Warren, was an avid sailor for over 30 years and liked nothing better than sailing on his boat, True Love, with his wife, Carolann, and two dogs, Spinaker and Jib. The day before he went into the hospital, he was teaching art to his students in Florida as he was very committed to them. He was known as a caring, honest man, who never complained but was demanding of his art students. Mr. Garafoa designed the 9/11 monument in Warren Township in the Municipal Plaza and also donated a portrait of Major General Joseph Warren and Lora Codington, philanthropist of Warren Library, and other paintings that hang in the Warren Courtroom and in the new municipal building.