Ras Dizzy

c.1932-2008 · Kingston, Jamaica

A wandering Rastafari poet who sold mimeographed verse on the Kingston campus, claimed to have boxed Cassius Clay, and painted Jamaica in poster colours that never once apologised.

The life

Born around 1932, the man known as Birth Livingstone lived itinerantly, without a fixed address, moving across Jamaica and spinning tall tales of Haiti, Panama, Africa and the boxing ring. He surfaced in the 1960s selling ballpoint drawings and mimeographed poems at the University of the West Indies, painting all the while. In 1979 the curator David Boxer put him in The Intuitive Eye at the National Gallery of Jamaica, the exhibition that brought the self-taught Jamaican Intuitives into the country’s art history, with Ras Dizzy among its founding figures. He died in Kingston in 2008.

The work

Poster paint on illustration board, bold colour and simple, confident forms: cowboys, prizefighters, racehorses, boats, palm trees and market vendors, often the artist himself in glamorous guises. Painting and poetry were one practice, and the backs of his boards carry titles, dates and verses. His work is held by the National Gallery of Jamaica, the Frost Art Museum in Miami and the University of the West Indies.

Why we love them

He painted his own legend and dared the facts to keep up. The swagger is the medium.

Go deeper

• Ras Dizzy at the Outsider Art Fair
• National Gallery of Jamaica
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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