Self-Portrait XI

Roy W. Ragle

Roy Ragle had a successful career exhibiting his astonishingly detailed and often very large woodcut portraits. This self-portrait was done in 1973, his 29th year. Ragle's work was mostly sold to private collectors or donated to public collections around the country and were seldom sold in the retail market. His self portraits over the years were a personal record of his on-going battle with Crohn's Disease.

Ragle's work was often mistakenly labelled as lithography or intaglio in exhibitions because many curators could not believe that his fluid, spidery line work could come from the typically rigid woodcut form.

This print 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 incorporated the grain of the woodblock into the center of this composition.