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A trip to a bookstore. A visit to New York's Greenwich Village. A TV show.
In the case of his latest show, opening Friday at Red Raven Art Company, it was going to see a performance of Cirque du Soleil in Tampa with his daughter two years ago.
"There was something about the pageantry, the color, the acrobatics," Rodger says.
Those images stayed with him, and about eight months ago, he decided to take up the subject and plunge in.
Rodger always plunges in with a vengeance.
"I put blinders on until I'm finished. I torture myself. I'm obsessed," he says. "And I always work until I've exhausted the subject."
The paintings — there are 21 in all — have a charming, whimsical and witty quality to them, with figures swirling, swinging and swaying across a colorful canvas.
The cartoonish figures wear funky clothes with stripes and polka dots, they hold on to swings, ride bikes and balance on mountains of chairs with the tiniest of feet and hands.
There is serenity and humor in the paintings, even if creating them wasn't necessarily serene or fun.
"There is not a painting up there where the color hasn't been changed and painted over," he says. "There's no magical process. It's all hard."
How does he know a work is complete?
"I don't know if it's done, but I am done with it," he says with a smile.
For Rodger, painting is a necessity.
"Even when I don't want to paint, I force myself to," he says, adding with a laugh, "If I don't get involved in some creative process, I start getting the DTs."
Rodger likes to capture an innocence in his work.
"I like children's art because nobody has told them how it is supposed to be. I try to capture that," he says.
But he also uses the foundation of art.
"The elements of art — balance, design, color relationships — I'm very aware of these things," he says. "I'm not trying to make any heavy-duty social statements here."
The foundations of art are important to Rodger, who didn't get seriously involved in art until he was in his 40s.
"I taught science for 25 years and I was a wrestling coach at Lampeter-Strasburg," says Rodger, who taught anatomy and physiology.
It was his friend, artist David Brumbach, who pushed Rodger to pursue art.
"He told me the day before he died (in 1992) that I had talent and I didn't use it," Rodger recalls. "That shook me up."
The stars kept aligning for him.
At 42, he enrolled in an art class at Millersville University and only got in because someone dropped out right before the class started.
"I felt at home in the art studio," he recalls. "So I kept taking classes."
He intensely studied drawing, the foundation for everything else.
Rodger began teaching art in the afternoon at L-S, after teaching science in the morning.
And just as he was getting his degree, a full-time art job opened at school.
He taught art for eight years and loved it.
But the time came, Rodger says, to devote more time to the making of art, and so in 2003 he retired and became a full-time painter.
As passionate as he is about painting, Rodger is just as passionate about the history of art and loves studying other artists, reading about them and traveling to see their work.
"You become a part of something bigger than yourself," he says. "It's important to me to feel like part of a community."
Rodger has a distinct style, whether he's painting the whimsical Cirque de Soleil figures of this exhibit, or more serious portraits of his travels to Italy.
"You don't create a style any more than you do a signature," he says. "It just sort of happens."
"Fred Rodger's Cirque Du Soleil"
Opening reception, Fri. from 5-8
Cont. through Nov.
Tues., and Thurs.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
(First Fri. 10 a.m.-8 p.m.) Free
Red Raven Art company
138 N. Prince St., 299-4400
www.redravenartcompany.com
