- Wisp 11 - Cover
Wisp 11
Apr.-May 2009
Cover page
Cover Artist: Ragen’s Art
Ragen Mendenhall creates paintings that inspire the imagination, beautiful and richly onamented scenes that seem to originate from a dream world. Upon further reflection, her paintings reveal more than meets the eye.
From a fertile spring of universal archetypes, Ragen draws the inspiration to create images that encourage us to examine our connection to each other, and our place in the world from a spiritual viewpoint. Her ethereal figures merging with elements of nature are presented with an intent to depict the spiritual concept of a soul, or eternal essence inhabiting the physical world.
In Ragen’s oil painting, “The Mask of Psyche”, a beautiful woman peers from behind a butterfly mask. ‘Psyche’, the Greek word for ‘soul’, is associated with the butterfly because the Greeks believed after death, the spirit, or the “breath of life” escaped from the body in the form of a bird or butterfly. The painting personifies the idea of a greater soul donning the ‘mask’ of the natural physical world, in order to experience what it is to be human.
Ragen’s works are created in a variety of media, oil painting, watercolor, pastel, colored pencil and ink techniques are among her many explorations. Fans of her work have been astonished to discover that many of the skillfully executed works in her collection where created in her early high school years.
Ragen is a native of Las Vegas and spent her childhood there. She attended the Las Vegas Academy of International Studies, Performing and Visual Arts, magnet high school which is housed in the historic art deco styled building on 7th and Bridger Street. The building was the original home of Las Vegas High school, the very first high school in Las Vegas. Upon her graduation in 1996, Ragen was awarded a full tuition scholarship to the Art Institute of Seattle. She has spent the last few years living in Arizona and in June of 2008, she relocated back home to Las Vegas to exhibit and create work from her new art studio at Neonopolis.
Ragen’s artwork is steadily becoming recognized nationally and abroad, her images were recently published in a card deck by the well known author, Doreen Virtue. She is currently represented in Laguna Beach, California, by Whelan Galleries.
• Find out more at http://www.ragensart.com
Blue Firebird, Art by Ragen Mendenhall
Artist’s Statement •
The primary focus of my work is centered around the expression of human emotion… My paintings are symbolic representations of emotional states, a type of visual poetry in which I present the elements of a story to be interpreted by the viewer.
The face is the greatest visual communicator, capable of inspiring empathy and ultimately, self-realization. I’ve always esteemed people’s faces to be objects of unequaled fascination, they are most often the focal point of my compositions.
The face is a marker of the individual, and yet it is also a mask…
From within each of us, a vast invisible world thrives. How does this unseen universe emanate from within the heavy confines of flesh?
The intimate self is expansive. Like water, it flows in every direction. In this energetic world of the imagination, objects of physical life, enjoy a greater, more glorified existence as symbols within an ocean of memories and associations. They are anchors, to which the net of understanding is tethered.
Non-physical experiences, mood and emotion, are so powerful, they color and seemingly adjust the corporeal world around us. I seek to amplify the essence of this pervasive emotional interior through the symbolism of the themes I depict in my work.
I often present animals or the forces of nature as allegorical elements and strengthen emotional association through deliberate use of certain color schemes that I find to be mood altering.
Common themes I explore include birth, transformation, and death. I am intrigued by the cyclical perfection of nature and the idea that death and darkness are necessary functions of growth and renewal. I am fascinated by the concept of consciousness as a type of knowledge built upon experiences of the physical world, but not bound by physical limitations. A theme I often portray through my work is that of ‘spirit’, ‘soul’ or ‘infinite consciousness’ inhabiting the physical realm of nature.
Blue Firebird (Detail, Back cover), by Ragen Mendenhall
