ROD RAGSDALE

If Rod Ragsdale’s “Dimensionals” represent what is sometimes referred to as “the mature statement of the artist,” then his arrival has had a circular and somewhat unorthodox development.  His early work, in college (San Jose State) and outside of school, was concerned primarily with modern or contemporary motifs.  After graduation, he entered studio study for traditional representational art in Florence, Italy.  His current work has its precursor in college classes in modern sculpture and three dimensional design.

While a college senior Ragsdale began to think seriously about being an artist.  After graduation he left for Europe to further his education.  While in Florence, a college professor, Maynard Steward, wrote suggesting study under Pietro Annigoni, a florentine figurative artist well known in Europe.  Ragsdale thought it an interesting possibility.  Then coincidence decided his future.  He was shown the top story of a palazzo being offered for rent by a Countess.  He couldn’t afford it.  However, the Countess turned out to be the Godmother of Annigoni’s son.  Eventually she arranged for Ragsdale to study under Nerina Simi, daughter of Pietro Annigoni’s teacher.  Thus began seven years study of figurative drawing and painting based on the methods and procedures of the Renaissance and the French Academy.

He only had a vague idea of what he was eventually going to do as an artist.  Education in European museums, a deeper understanding of the Renaissance and acquisition of technical mastery were rewarding in themselves.  Outside of study he produced traditional figure and landscape paintings and gradually adopted, and became completely immersed in, the values perpetuated by traditional European art.  That changed as he completed his studies.  His fellow students were the sons and daughters of European royalty and wealth.  Though friendly, many regarded Ragsdale as a member of the working class and therefore not welcome in their family homes.  Previously only vaguely aware of European class prejudice, he now personally understood its ramifications and made a reassessment of the expression of conservative ideals in art.  He found Simi’s students often at odds with the modern world and nostalgic for a lost past.  It became important his art express the present.  He returned to California.

Represented by Wortsman Stewart Galleries in San Francisco, Ragsdale’s work took on a contemporary character.  While retaining realistic representational draftsmanship, watercolors, oils and lithographs focused on figures in varied architectural and landscape settings.  Then a profound altering of conceptual experience occurred.  He began having random, involuntary episodes of extrasensory perception.  He received mental images from his wife, Carol.  In one bizarre instance, his thought induced her action.  Carol or strangers would answer questions he had on his mind.  This period was accompanied by symbolic dreams explaining that our minds are somehow connected.  These apparently shamanic or mystical experiences were extraordinary and would change Ragsdale’s view of life and his statement as an artist.  They were initiated by a series of paintings.

He had often read and thought about the larger meaning of things, the purpose of it all, and the question of existence or, as William James put it, “Why is there something instead of nothing?”  In this frame of mind, he made a painting, “Existence Blip,” showing a man standing with his hands resting on a strip of raised transparent plastic, the plastic a symbol for existence.  As the painting progressed a sense of uneasiness began to manifest itself and continued on into the next painting.  Then the ESP experiences began.  Ragsdale experienced bewilderment, fear, anxiety and a strange detached state of mind.  After a month or two the ESP episodes and the strange mind set suddenly stopped.  He continued with depictions of figures and plastic forms in a series of eleven paintings, each taking two to three months to complete.  He thinks the ESP experiences were primarily the result of anxiety provoked by a subconscious need to come to terms with the realization that we have no answers to “why existence?” and perhaps a correlating “what purpose?”  He thinks extrasensory perception instinctual to mankind and a natural survival mechanism.  The episodes induced in Ragsdale the conviction that there is much more to life than we usually acknowledge or perceive and the mystery of the paranormal is intriguing and beautiful.

After completing the Plastic Symbol paintings he found himself distracted by the invention of teaching aids for Carol, an elementary school teacher, and his two daughters.  One thing lead to another and he found himself manufacturing teaching aids and, in conjunction with Carol, developing a ”student teaching students” instructional system necessitating the writing and illustrating of five books.  He had seen the meandering off the artistic path as a short diversion.  It lasted six years.

Continuing painting, his focus went back to the mystery of the paranormal and use of The River as a metaphor for the unknown, a motif prompted by both his time spent fishing with his father in his youth and paintings made of the Arno River flowing through Florence.  Gradually the idea of River evolved to the form of a personal existential icon in his “Stream Series” and “River Series.”

Today Paraphysics and Parapsychology attempt to understand the mysteries of the paranormal.  Ragsdale’s interest in these areas underlies the creation of “Dimensionals”.  He now has no doubt that the scientists working in what they term “The New Science” are correct when they proclaim that we are experiencing the “Third Scientific Revolution,” a revolution which goes beyond the discoveries of Newtonian and Einsteinian-Quantum physics.  These scientists see a new paradigm evolving which suggests that consciousness originates as an energy field outside the brain and that we coexist with other universes and other dimensions.  With an awareness of this astonishing revolution taking place, Ragsdale has conceived his Dimensionals at the suggestion of particle physics as portals to other realities and, in his mind, each stands as a symbol for the mysteries of the unknown and the ultimate enigma of existence.