Surrealism
collapses the laws of time and space; permits all synchronicities
and juxtapositions; and nurtures the logic of the dream. The style of surrealism is a
visual language which allows me—a southerner by birth who is also formally trained in the rigors and
disciplines of science—to
explore and express my obsession with deep history, fascination with
myth and symbol,
and curiosity about color and form.
RICHARD HAGERTY Richard Hagerty, a self-taught artist, paints from a vast reservoir of dreams, his store of personal imagery suffused with the infinite memories, symbols, and archetypes of the collective unconscious. Attenuated since childhood to the power of dream and myth, the notion of the shadow self, and the baroque imagery and iconography of the Catholic religion—with its overlay of threat and terror— in which he was raised, Hagerty states that “painting, for me, is a language, a way to express the conflicts and complications of the psyche, both my own and those of the culture at large.” An early mentorship by the noted intellectual, feminist, and art historian, Laura Bragg (the first woman in the United States to head a public museum), had a seminal influence on Hagerty at a young age. Bragg—who held a salon in her Chalmers Street home in Charleston, South Carolina which Hagerty attended—had lived in Paris in the 1930s, collected art, and known such iconic figures as Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. She introduced Hagerty to the powerful, disturbing paintings of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century Flemish painter, Heironymous Bosch, best known for his meticulously-painted, visionary scenes of hell and paradise. Hagerty did not begin to paint until he entered Duke University Medical School, at which time he felt the need of balancing the right-brain rigors of intense medical training. Simultaneously, he became interested in the work of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and psychoanalytic dream theory. Working initially on paper in watercolor and pen-and-ink, Hagerty rapidly established a unique and identifiable style. Art critic Roberta Kefalos has written, “Many of his works depict imaginative scenarios of fantastic figures and creatures which seem to float in shimmering landscapes of flowers, animals, and trees. Others feature urban or circus-related subjects or fanciful, airborne colonies of balloons, sunbursts, streamers and machine forms. A skilled colorist, Hagerty achieves a bold resonant effect…His use of clearly-defined form and strong patterning adds to the vibrant energy that characterizes his work.” Throughout his residency training in plastic surgery at Emory University in Atlanta, he continued to paint in watercolor. In recent years, Hagerty has added oil to his repertoire of media, and has begun to execute works, sometimes monumental in scale, on canvas. He tends to paint thematically, producing painting in clusters or series which address his multitudinous themes and interests, such as geometric forms, bullfighting, animal sacrifice, anatomy, philosophy, mythology, and astronomy, among many others. A board-certified plastic surgeon, Hagerty has been the focus on a dozen solo shows and many group exhibitions while maintaining an active private practice in Charleston, South Carolina. He has a special interest in cleft lip and palate surgery, and travels overseas regularly as a volunteer to operate on indigent children who would otherwise not receive surgical care. An ardent conservationist, he is involved in the land conservation movement in several capacities. He and his wife, Barbara, have four children. |