Studio/Artist Exploration: Ramomar Buckley

Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun and Queen Ankhesenamun

Link to "Ramomart" Website

Ramomar (or Omar) Buckley is an artist of Jamaican-American heritage who developed his lifelong passion at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and the National Academy School of Fine Arts in New York City. Although his studies have covered canonical European masters like Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, and Monet, he prefers to apply his skills to more "exotic" or non-Western subject matter such as characters from Asian, Middle Eastern, Mesoamerican, and most of all Nile Valley African history (his current moniker evokes the Egyptian sun deity Ra).

Nubian royalty from ancient Sudan

By far Ramomar's favorite genre of artwork to produce, or at least the best represented on his site's gallery, are painted and sketched portraits of royalty and gods from native Egyptian and Nubian culture. Personalities he has portrayed include the Egyptian Amenhotep III, Ramses II, Tiye, Akhenaten, and the Nubian Piye (or Pianki) and Taharqa. I admire how Ramomar's portraits so faithfully match those of authentic ancient statuary from those cultures, yet he renders them as they may have looked as flesh-and-blood people. And he certainly portraits the indigenous, pre-Islamic Egyptians' appearance much more accurately than most other artists (take notes, Ridley Scott).

Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III

An example of Ramomar's grayscale drawings

As far as Flash software is concerned, Ramomar's website uses it mostly for simple navigation. There are pull-down menus at the top that provide links you to his various galleries (which include not only Egyptian and Nubian portraits but also those from Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern history, commissioned portraits, and photography), and clicking on each gallery image's thumbnail will blow it up to full size. It isn't the most elaborate use of Flash or similar software, but I believe it is serviceable for the artist's showcasing purpose. My only real complaint is that some of the non-Egyptian/Nubian galleries are a little too small (including several with only one image in them), so I think he could stand to merge them together into a larger, more inclusive section.

But overall I believe it is worth your time if you're into ancient Egyptian and Nubian history and want to see a non-Eurocentric representation of its people.