About

Brian L. Ragsdale PhD is a mixed media artist primarily using acrylic paints, marker, and cut paper. He became interested in art in the 5th grade when his teacher taught him about negative space. In the early 1980’s, he received his BS in fine arts and graphic design from Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD, where he was voted the Outstanding Student in Art, and worked for 15 years as a corporate and freelance graphic designer in South Norwalk, CT. Over this period, he worked with IBM, Pepsi Cola and several organizations designing logos, newsletters, brochures, and other graphics and advertisements. He was also a trained typographer and illustrator. In the late 1980s, he won an outstanding mention for a watercolor of a sailboat from an Stamford Art Club exhibition. In 2013 his mixed media painting, “Cows of Cornish” was accepted in a juried art exhibit in the Richards Library Art Center in his current hometown of Newport, NH.

In the late 1990’s, he went on to graduate school at the University of Rhode Island and majored in clinical psychology, earning his masters, 1998, and doctorate in 2001. After earning his doctorate, he embarked on a career is psychology having developed and taught undergraduate and graduate psychology courses, and he became licensed as a clinical psychologist in the state of IL.

Although his art is held in several private art collections, he is currently seeking gallery representation.

He works full time as a college administrator for a leading distant learning university. Dr. Ragsdale, or Brian as he is most commonly referred to. There he works evenings and weekends, creating fine art paintings and digital graphic art images. His latest work examines themes of African American beauty particularly women of color, identity, and art with social justice themes relating to freedom, joy, and happiness.