The art of Ronald Lockett speaks to the universality of the human condition through the lens of lived experience in the American South. Working within the artistic traditions of found materials, Lockett addressed themes of racial, economic, and political unrest, including the unfulfilled promises of the civil rights movement and environmental degradation. Locket’s art also examines his own mortality and celebrates the power of the women in his life, his longing for romantic love, and his deeply held religious faith.

Born and raised in the Pipe Shop neighborhood of Bessemer, Alabama, Lockett came of age among a close-knit family in a city marked by industrial decline. His elder cousin was the artist Thornton Dial (1928–2016), who mentored and encouraged him. A key figure in Lockett’s and Dial’s creative life was the family matriarch, Sarah Dial Lockett, who schooled both men in faith and history, as well as through the creative wellspring of everyday life that was displayed in her quilts, rose gardens, and meals that she made and served. Lockett turned his attention to artmaking full-time in his early twenties. By the time of his death at age 32 from AIDS-related pneumonia, he had produced more than 350 works.

Largely unrecognized in his lifetime, Lockett’s art fits squarely into evolving histories of American art during the late twentieth century. Lockett was a core figure in a community of artists including Dial, Lonnie Holley (b. 1950), and Joe Minter (b. 1943), whose work flourished in the African American communities of Birmingham and Bessemer.

Bernard L. Herman, “Fever Within: The Art of Ronald Lockett,” in Valérie Rousseau (ed.) Fever Within: The Art of Ronald Lockett / Once Something Has Lived It Can Never Really Die, exhibition brochure (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2016).