“Some people create with words, or with music, or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, ‘I’ve never seen anyone run like that before.’ It’s more than just a race; it’s style. It’s doing something better than everyone else. It’s being creative.”
—Steve Prefontaine
Raevyn Rogers, the 2017 Bowerman Award winner and eight-time All-American who won six national championships at the University of Oregon, more than lives up to Pre’s legacy of excellence on the track.
But while Pre saw running as his version of art, for Rogers it’s just one of two ways she expresses herself artistically.
The other is, quite literally, with a brush and paints.
When many people think of Raevyn Rogers, they picture her anchoring the 4 x 400 relay at the 2017 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships, clinching the Triple Crown for the UO in front of a thunderous packed house at Hayward Field moments before a thunderstorm sent fans sprinting for the exits.
She is a picture of controlled power, as violent as she is graceful, legs a blur as the spikes on her shoes tear up the track on the home straight. Every step closer to the finish line whips the crowd into an even louder frenzy, and when she crosses the finish line and makes history—no women's team had ever won track and field’s Triple Crown before Rogers and the Ducks did it—the cheering reverberates throughout the entire stadium.
But after the spikes have come off, after the fans have left the stadium, after ESPN’s cameras have stopped rolling, and after the lights at Hayward Field have been turned off and the gates locked, the other Raevyn Rogers emerges. Forget the excitement of running 800 meters in under two minutes in front of tens of thousands of fans—the other Raevyn Rogers finds beauty and peace in watching paint drying.
“I used to design clothes a lot when I was younger,” said Rogers. “I’d sketch and I’d show my aunt, and she’d say, ‘This is looking really good. This would be nice.’ But, as I got to the University of Oregon, I discovered more of myself in art, and that’s when it emerged and grew. There’s a peace that I’ve found in painting.”
Like most college students, Rogers went through a number of potential majors in her mind—at one point she wanted to be a dentist; at another, an orthopedic surgeon. But ultimately she settled on Spanish—she grew up bilingual in Houston—and art, expressing herself on canvases in the College of Design.
“My favorite classes [at the UO] have been all my painting classes,” Rogers said. “I like being able to get a degree in something I really enjoy.”
Rogers, who prefers to paint with watercolors, estimates she’s produced more than 10 pieces of art while at the UO, including a six-foot-by-four-foot piece she completed just weeks after representing Team USA at the International Association of Athletics Federations’ World Indoor Championships in England.
“I just happened to be on an airplane, and I was drawing whatever I thought about,” she said. “I like to take different approaches to each thing that I paint, so I decided that I was going to paint a representation of a little girl, but like a stick figure.
“I’m going to keep it raw and imitate it being on a notebook, because what I sketched it on was a notebook. I usually like abstract, but I started with figures last term so I’m experimenting more with the playfulness and the fun colors, shapes, and figures. That’s something I want to incorporate into my art style.”
Dealing with art professors and critics is similar to dealing with demanding track fans and coaches, Rogers said, and strength can be drawn from learning how to deal with both without losing sight of who the most important person to please is.
“You can’t care what people think when you’re presenting your artwork to a group. Just like you can’t let it get too personal if someone’s rooting for you or not rooting for you. At the end of the day, you’re the only one that’s involved and invested in your own craft. I’m over here putting hard work into my paintings and believing my paintings are going to be great, no matter what anyone thinks. It’s the same with track—if I have a bad race it doesn’t mean I’m not putting in hard work. I’ve definitely become a little bit more relaxed and carefree in some areas. Life’s too short to be thinking about and caring about what people have to say about you.”
Raevyn Rogers is graduating in June, and when she packs up her car and moves to Philadelphia to pursue her career as a professional sprinter, she will do so with two diplomas to hang on her wall. While track and field will dominate her life for the next decade, art very much factors into her long-term goals.
“I definitely want to get into more art galleries,” Rogers said. “I want to expand my name on the art scene. I joke around, but a goal of mine is definitely to get a piece into [the Museum of Modern Art]. It’s a huge goal, and we’ll see how realistic it becomes, but that’s something I want to push for.”