Roy Ragle dating history

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Roy Ward Ragle (December 8, 1944 – December 11, 2014) was a San Francisco artist known for his self-portraits executed in large woodcuts. Inspired by the Japanese tradition of Ukiyo-e, his prints were linear in character, finely detailed, but with imagery traced in a web of thin, coiled and looping lines, creating a woodcut that was often mistaken for an etching. Ragle’s persistent attempt of capturing his own features in his woodcuts was triggered by a diagnosis of Crohn’s disease in the early 1970s, a chronic illness that would mark his life and his art. The medications so affected and altered his features that his prints became a way of preserving and rescuing a sense of identity. As Kenneth Baker noted in Roy Ragle's obituary: "Mr. Ragle (...) had long depicted death as his companion in woodcuts and prints in other media, in a manner reminiscent of European dance of death imagery and to Mexican folk art tradition."