Ransome's artwork centers on his African-American lineage, which is traced back to sharecroppers of the American South who migrated to Northern cities along the East Coast. His pictorial narratives are personal, yet the symbols he use are universal and interplay with larger social, racial, ancestral, economic, and political histories that inform our nation to this day. The history of his family is the history of Black Americans, which is the history of all of North America.
His works, often combine acrylic paint with an array of found, made, and purchased papers. The materials he use are conceptual statements on this legacy of an often-overlooked portion of society that made something out of nothing.
Both his representational and abstract works incorporate a variety of symbols, patterns, and marks to create powerful images filled with the rhythmic properties of music that weave throughout the oeuvre. Born in a generation infused by soul and R&B music, he grew up hearing rap music that freely sampled the music of his childhood, mixing and recomposing these songs to create rhythms befitting hip hop music. For his work, the natural instinct is to paint and collage on the same surface, applying the same spontaneity of hip hop deejays and the resourcefulness of rural quilters, who use what is at hand, assembling, collaging, and creating.
While made of the energy of contemporary culture, his work is also influenced by Abstract Expressionism and draws from the soulfulness of the quilts from the women of Gee’s Bend. For him, there is a visual rhythm to layering these antipodes: found versus purchased objects, figures versus abstract, paint versus paper, busy versus quiet.
His work aims to imbue each piece with a lyrical yet authentic resilience borne of limited resources and frugality that speaks to the struggle and hope, pain, joy, and soul of folks in the Black community.