Roy Ragle had a successful career exhibiting his astonishingly detailed and very large woodcut portraits. His work was often mistakenly labelled as lithographs or etchings in exhibitions because no one believed that his fluid, spidery line work could come from the rigid woodcut form. His mastery of craft was matched by the psychological perception of his subjects, which more often than not included himself, as he described the harrowing affects of disease on his physiognomy.