Bio

Marshall Ransfield is an interdisciplinary artist born in New York, and grew up between New Zealand and New Jersey. He currently resides in the Phenix City, AL, and Columbus, GA area. He was one of the 2022 Artists-in-Residence at Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY. He graduated from Columbus State University in Columbus, GA with his BFA and Art History minor in December 2022. He is a recipient of the Columbus State University SRACE Grant (Student Research and Creative Endeavors) which provided funding for the materials for his Senior Exhibition artworks. He has exhibited work in LaGrange, GA, and Columbus, GA in the ArtLab, Illges Gallery, Highland Gallerie, and Rankin Gallery. His work has also exhibited outside of Georgia at Ohio University in Athens, OH, the Fowler-Kellogg Art Center in Chautauqua, NY, and at the Erie Art Museum in Erie, PA.

Artist Statement

My work has set out to consider how LGBTQ+ fit in or have been removed from the world around us through reworking and reconsidering cultures, structures, objects, their purpose, and how they came to exist. My cultural experiences as a transgender, Māori, and Jewish person influence the way I create my art. The art, objects, materials, stories, language, and symbolism inspire and intrigue me. 

As Jewish, Maori, and transgender person, I look at the world through a critical lens of how gender is represented and how society expects people to perform their gender, and how different cultures may have these expectations fluctuate from culture to culture. Examining the artificial structure that confines people to ‘male’ or ‘female,’ and what it means to be ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine,’ picking apart languages that have gendered nouns, as well as metaphorical gender in the English language.

The purpose of my art is to take people on a journey that takes inspiration from the cultures I grew up with, whether it is from the textures, patterns, shapes, stories, rituals, colours, or experiences. I want each piece of my art to bring someone closer to questioning the artificial structure of the gender binary, and questioning how one element - such as colour, can change the way we perceive gender and validate gender according to that structure. I want to use my work to educate people about the history of the LGBTQ+ community, the other communities that I am a part of, and the attempted erasure or hiding of their existence in history.