Ransome was born in the small town of Rich Square, NC, moved to New Jersey as a teenager, and now resides in the Hudson Valley region of New York. He received an MFA from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA and a BFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Through collage, painting, sculpture, installation, and video, ransome’s work comments on his family’s life in America from 1899, the year his grandmother was born, to our current times. At the core of his practice is a reflection on the Great Migration, the period in American history when six million Black people left the south and migrated north and west in search of a better life. While his pictorial narratives are personal, the images in his work are universal and interplay with larger social, racial, ancestral, economic, and political histories that inform our nation to this day.

Ransome’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Opalka Gallery, Albany, NY; the Contemporary art Museum (CAM), Raleigh, NC; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; and Geary, Millerton, NY. Group shows include the 2023 Center for Maine Contemporary Art Biennial, Rockland, ME; An Unpredictable Time & Place, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; 47th Presentation of Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, NC; as well as exhibitions at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ; Band of Vices, Los Angeles, CA, The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston-Salem, NC; The Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, NY; and the Katonah Museum, Katonah, NY.

Ransome was a 2022 Pollock-Krasner foundation grantee and was awarded the 2022 Hudson Valley Artist Purchase Award from The Dorsky Museum. He was recently awarded a Silver Medal in the Innovation category from Contemporary Collage Magazine. He participated in residencies at the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Studios of Key West; Key West, FL; and Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY in January 2025.