Ricky Lee Gordon

Ricky is a self-taught artist born in Johannesburg South Africa in 1984 .Having lived and worked in Cape Town he moved to LA in 2016 to study classical painting. He is well known for his large-scale murals that can be seen in cities all over the world, from New York to Istanbul and Madagascar to Kathmandu.

Ricky has been inspired by his experiences in meditation and Buddhist Dharma (law of nature) and therefore now his paintings explore the nature of non-duality and interconnectedness focusing on bringing to light relevant social issues and universal truths. His intention with his murals is to create artwork that has a connection to the people and place in which he is painting.

Ricky only started painting full time in 2014 having his first solo show in 2015. Before this he was focused on curatorial and creative activism; founding /A WORD OF ART gallery and artist residency in addition to the Colour Ikamva school rejuvenation project.

His studio work has become the antithesis of his public murals as it allows for a more meditative environment to create and allows for him to explore deeper into his ideas without compromise.

Sometimes his work is abstract and deconstructed and sometimes straight forward and didactic; collaging two images together adding bold poetic text to create a union between the dreamlike stories.

His achievements in public art have made it on CNN, Mail & Guardian’s ‘200 young people in SA who make a difference’, Winner of the International Art and healing network award for 2011 and National Geographic’s list of ‘11 street art greats’ alongside the likes of Banksy.

In 2017 Ricky accepted a part scholarship to study and the Los Angeles academy of figurative art and after 7 months dropped out as he felt he had gained a fair amount of foundational knowledge and wanted to get back to focusing on his own work.