When Ricky Needham works, he works silently, except for the occasional breath sucked noisily through his teeth.
He
bends over a drafting table on a recent weekday morning putting the
final touches on “Kings Flying Over the Holy City,” a fanciful
depiction of two crowned figures flying a magic motorcycle over a
dome-capped skyline.
“Why don’t you do it on the easel?” asks
his job coach, Laura Lashley. “That way you won’t hurt your neck.” The
woman Needham describes as his “boss lady” may have to give the
developmentally disabled painter the odd physical pointer, but she
doesn’t have to direct him much when it comes to filling his canvasses.
The 52-year-old artist simply pours the contents of his dreams onto the
page, cramming them full of spangled automobiles, carnival rides and
birthday suits.
“It’s fantasy art,” Needham says. “Everybody’s
getting along, there’s no crime, no hate, just peace.” Scenes from
Needham’s dream world ring his rectangular studio in Winston- Salem’s
Artists on Liberty building. Lashley points to one in particular.
“The
first thing about his work that caught my eye were the amazing rides,
the carnival rides,” she says. “Like in this one the Ferris wheel is
beds and all the people are laying.”
Before she became his job
coach, Lashley kept a studio near Needham’s at Atelier on Trade Street.
That was in 1997, three years after Needham’s first solo show in
Morganton. Since then the artist has shown work in Scotland, at the
Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art and at Vanderbilt University
in Nashville.
Needham started late on his professional art
career, although his talent first manifested itself in elementary
school when he put his crayons to use depicting the cars, trucks and
tractors that fascinated him. When he was in his twenties, he enrolled
in art classes at Forsyth Tech and the Sawtooth Center to refine his
ability.
His emergence as a professional artist happened after
he was selected to participate in the Signature Studio XI program in
Morganton in 1994. The studio provides space and some support for
exceptionally talented artists with disabilities.
That’s where Needham settled into his signature style and began consistently producing canvasses containing scenes from his fantasyland. In Needham’s world, the people are multiethnic and always naked, and motorized vehicles take to the skies.
Those who would be put off by the nudity in Needham’s work just don’t get the artist’s message, which he sometimes puts in the form of a mathematical equation.
“The way you explained it to me was ‘butts equals hearts equals love,’” Lashley says. “That’s right,” Needham says. “Butts stand for love because they’re shaped like hearts.”
Some folks, even his fans, still don’t understand. A patron recently requested several of Needham’s paintings — he wanted to hang them in his office. He requested butt-free paintings, which means Needham and Lashley will have to plumb the artist’s completed works for a handful of appropriate pieces.
Needham recently received an emerging artist grant that he used to construct a website featuring his work. Needham’s paintings make regular appearances in Triad art galleries, and Lashley intends to help him make a bigger name for himself outside Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.
“I just don’t understand how he isn’t more famous,” she says. The impending fall season also holds other promises, like the Dixie Classic Fair, which is one of Needham’s favorites. You can see the fair permeating his oeuvre — a Ferris wheel here, a Tilt-a-Whirl there, maybe a roller coaster or two silhouetted against the sunset.
Needham ticks off the things he likes. “I like the animals, the horses, cows, chickens, roosters,” he says. “My favorite ride is the Ferris wheel, but I used to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Thunder Road and the Gold Rush.” Then he gets quiet, puts a quarter-sized dab of paint on his finger and works it into the edge of the canvas in front of him.
To comment on this story, e-mail Amy Kingsley at amy@yesweekly.com.
