Excerpt:
Homeless, prolific and unpredictable, Ras Dizzy occupies
a special place among his island’s legendary Intuitive
artists.
With no home or studio of his own, Ras Dizzy – ‘Dizzy’
to those who know him; ‘Ras’ is a Rastafarian honorific
title – gets by with a little help from his friends
and lives from sale to sale of his brightly coloured
paintings. Carrying little more than a portfolio of
his work, his art supplies and a small bag of clothes,
he regularly shuttles by bus between Kingston (Jamaica’s
capital, on thesouthern side of the island) and small
towns on the island’s north side. In Kingston and in
Ocho Ríos, a north-coast resort, a few galleries sell
his work, providing a vital if uncertain income.
Ras Dizzy is one of the legendary Jamaican artists
who came to prominence in the 1970s. Their paintings,
sculptures and carvings helped shape a sense of national,
cultural identity in Jamaica in the decades before and
after its independence from Britain in 1962.
The article as it appears in Raw
Vision magazine.
You may click on the first two pages for a larger image.
To read the rest of this article, buy
Raw Vision #54.