Ras Dizzy is the author of remarkable paintings among those produced by the Jamaican “Intuitives,” a group of self-taught artists whose work began to attract the attention of the media and experts in the late 1970s. Many details of Ras Dizzy’s life remain speculative. Indeed, his fantastic stories and fabrications earned him the nickname “Dizzy” (dazed, dizzy), while “Ras” is an honorific title in the Rastafari movement. Ras Dizzy claimed to have traveled to Africa and China, to have ridden horseback with Hollywood cowboys, and to have fought against Muhammad Ali. At the end of the 1960s, he lived on the margins of the art scene in the capital, traveling across Jamaica, selling drawings or exchanging them for food and distributing photocopies of his poems. At the University of the West Indies, radical intellectuals published his poetic, fantastical, and sociopolitical commentaries in their weekly journal. The paintings and sculptures of the Jamaican “Intuitives” most often depict scenes of rural and urban life, sometimes referencing the Bible or African spirituality.
DIZZY ras
