Nightjohn, 2020
Ransome was born in North Carolina and moved to a New Jersey suburb as a teenager. He graduated from Pratt Institute and was a tenured professor in the School of Visual Performing Arts at Syracuse University before retiring to pursue his dreams of being a studio artist. He received his MFA in Studio Arts from Lesley University.
Ransome’s artwork centers on his African-American lineage, which is traced back to sharecroppers of the American South who migrated to Northern cities along the East Coast. His pictorial narratives are personal, yet the symbols he uses are universal and interplay with larger social, racial, ancestral, economic, and political histories that inform our nation to this day.