Recontextualization, 2025-2026 ‍

Recontextualization takes the Western canon’s most recognizable images, from Shakespearean heroines to Pop Art icons, and relocates them into Black geographies. Where the canon left Black figures out of the picture, these paintings place them at the center of familiar compositions, set in living rooms, at the kitchen table, and on the bayou, settings that hold outsized significance in Black American storytelling. The result is a counter-narrative rather than a correction. ‍

While You Were Waiting, 2023-2024

While You Were Waiting documents everyday life at the bus stop, one of the most overlooked public stages in Black American life. Each large-scale watercolor is named for a real street or intersection in geographical Black meccas. The series treats waiting not as empty time but as the place where community, humor, and oral history are made. More than a backdrop, the bus stop is the vehicle through which these stories are passed from person to person, grounded in reality whether they are fact, fiction, or a mix of both.

People of Ramseyville, 2023-Present

People of Ramseyville is the portrait series in which Ramsey built the visual language that runs through her narrative work. She refined the color theory, pattern, and flatness that would come to define her larger paintings, introducing the residents of Ramseyville one face at a time.

In Black and White, 2026

In Black and White is a series of gesture drawings, each made in five minutes or less. Working in white gouache on black mixed-media paper, Ramsey strips her visual language down to line alone, catching posture, movement, and the small gestures of everyday life before the moment passes. Where her watercolors are slow and layered, these drawings are about speed and instinct.