Self Examination Series

Roy W. Ragle

Roy Ragle had a successful career exhibiting his astonishingly detailed and very large woodcut portraits, this self-portrait was done in his 39th year. Ragle's works were mostly sold or donated to public collections around the country and were seldom sold in the retail market.

His woodcuts were often mistakenly labeled as lithographs or etchings in exhibitions because no one believed that his fluid, spidery line work could come from the rigid woodcut form. This print measures two by three feet and is printed relief, meaning that the white areas were cut away and the remaining surface lines were inked and printed, both of which involved great care, concentration, and skill.

Ragle's mastery of craft was matched by the psychological perception of his subjects, which more often than not included himself, as he described the harrowing effects of Crohn's Disease on his physiognomy. Ragle's work obsessively turned to his medical condition and his own mortality. Throughout the 1980s his work was exhibited in print competitions, community art galleries, and museum survey exhibitions. But his increasingly poor health finally caused his doctor to order him out of the studio in the late-1980s.