(1959-2004)

Roy Ferdinand painted the tough New Orleans neighborhoods where he shared his life on the streets with drug dealers and junkies, pimps and whores.  His uncompromisingly realistic style can be unsettling in its brutal and sexually explicit depictions of an inner-city "gangsta" lifestyle.  The African-American artist was a self-proclaimed "street gorilla" and a practitioner of an African form of voodoo. His work has been exhibited in several gallery shows and is in the permanent collections of the African American Museum in Dallas and the art museum of the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He died of cancer at the age of 45 in December, 2004.