Ronald Lockett

1965-1998 · Bessemer, Alabama, USA

Three doors from his cousin Thornton Dial in Bessemer’s Pipe Shop neighbourhood, he cut weathered tin into deer, fences and elegies, a whole career burning through in barely fifteen years.

The life

Lockett was born in 1965 in the Pipe Shop neighbourhood of Bessemer, Alabama, and lived there his whole life. He grew up watching his older cousin Thornton Dial at work, three houses away, one of the few adults who took the sensitive boy seriously, and the two became close artistic allies. He began with paint and wire and found his real voice in salvaged metal. He died of AIDS-related pneumonia in August 1998, and his reputation has grown steadily since.

The work

Layered collages of weathered, oxidised tin salvaged from old structures, nailed to board and cut into deer, fenced enclosures and shrouded fields. His recurring subjects are traps and confinement, endangered animals standing in for endangered people, and historical wounds from the Holocaust to the Oklahoma City bombing, always shot through with the possibility of rebirth. His work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the American Folk Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Why we love them

The quietest of the Alabama metal poets. Where Dial roars, Lockett grieves, and the rust does the talking.

Go deeper

• Ronald Lockett at the Outsider Art Fair
• Ronald Lockett on Wikipedia
• Souls Grown Deep Foundation
• 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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