Press Releases Index

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 28, 2007
CONTACT: Jette Englund
Office of University Relations
908-737-NEWS (6397)
E-mail: jenglund@kean.edu

James Ransome Presents His Visual Stories in Kean University Gallery
Meet the Master of the Fine Art of Children's Book Illustration

UNION, N.J. - The Kean University CAS Gallery opens its 2007-08 season with an exhibition of James E. Ransome, from Wednesday, September 12, through Wednesday, October 24, including a reception with the artist on Thursday, September 27, from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Ransome is known for his enduring images of his illustrations for Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson, to Quinnie Blue by Dinah Johnson, to his most recent work, Bruh Rabbit and the Tar Baby Girl by the late Virginia Hamilton, according to the beautifully illustrated exhibition catalogue titled, James Ransome - The Fine Art of Children's Book Illustration: 'Down Home:' Picturebook Paintings of Folklife in the Black South , edited by Joyce Bickerstaff.  

"Words have always been my inspiration for creating art," Ransome says. "I am a painter who has chosen children's book illustration as my primary means of expression." Since he made his decision, he has illustrated more than 30 books.

Gallery Director Neil Tetkowski is excited to introduce James Ransome to the public. "James Ransome has a remarkable talent," Tetkowski said.  "Through his artworks we have an opportunity to better understand the complex web of what we call America today. His narrative images are strong examples of artworks celebrating the human spirit."

The Pratt Institute in New York had an immense impact on the artist's style. Pratt introduced Ransome to the three basic elements of his work: drawing, design and color. Also, a number of European impressionist painters - Manet, Degas, van Gogh, and Vuillard - influenced his work. "The accomplished American modernist William H. Johnson more than any artist has had a profound influence on both the stylistic features of my work and my subjects. My painterly self is rooted in the experiences of a close-knit black community in the rural South," Ransome is quoted as saying in the catalogue.

"The original paintings by Ransome (b. 1961) in this exhibition are an exquisite visual journey through the American South, home to the majority of the 38 million black people in America today and birthplace of the artist himself. Ransome chronicles the folk culture of African-Americans through 13 generations of struggle and achievement - from centuries of enslavement to the post-Jim Crow era. Picture-book stories unfold through the spirited illustrations of Ransome's artwork.

"Ransome found the inspiration for his fine art in the written stories of 18 major children's authors. His artistic renderings of these texts featuring ordinary everyday people and their southern landscape, give this show its particular vernacular quality. American rural people permeate his paintings. Ransome's visual stories capture the soul, the deep spiritual and emotional roots of black culture and heritage in the American South. His paintings make it easy to feel, to imagine, and to be embraced by an earlier, albeit imperfect, America. For example, we are brought into the world of slavery and the plantation in Running to Freedom , the sharecropper's farm in Clara and John , a baseball game of the Negro National League in Satchel, and the shouts of a street vendor pulsating through the New Orleans French Quarter in Banana Man II .

"Whether Ransome's subject is a segregated hospital of the 1930s, or a Texas fishing village, his art-narratives offers reassuring truths about the power of love in family, and community. Depicting the dignity of labor and the affirmation of black manhood and womanhood Ransome's artworks bring power to these stories of courageous and resilient people.

"A delicate realism pervades the artwork showing the southern landscape. Living close to the countryside gave me a special appreciation of its natural force and beauty," says the artist. These extraordinary paintings are informed by Ransome's childhood experiences growing up on Rich Square, North Carolina. They eloquently convey his understanding and delight in America's rural folk, his passion for children's book illustration as a form of fine art, his love of history, and his deep reverence for the American struggle for social justice."
--   Joyce Bickerstaff

Images will be available upon request by calling Gallery Director Neil Tetkowski at 908-737-4407.