Gary Ames Rickson The muralist who put Africa is the Beginning on the wall of the Roxbury YMCA died on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, at Boston Medical Center. He was 84. He was born in that same hospital.

At three years old, he was introduced to oral drama and the performing arts when Elma Lewis opened her School of Fine Arts in a six-room apartment on Waumbeck Street in 1950, Gary and his sisters were among her earliest students. An urban boy in a school built to teach art, dance, drama, and music to Roxbury's children and to instill cultural pride.

At nine years old, he made the decision to change the approach in how he would express himself creatively. Rather than memorize and recite “other people’s art”, he would create his own art- commanding authenticity at a deeper level.

He was the third generation of Rickson men to play piano. His grandfather, George Rickson Sr., played in notable jazz bands in Boston and New York, alongside Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle. Gary knew what he had been handed, and he wrote “My grandfathers were great men and great contributors to mankind; to Black and American culture.

Gary graduated from Jamaica Plain High School in 1961 and took some technical courses through Boston University, after not being able to attend college in Virginia due to being bedridden for over a year with tuberculosis. He was tutored in painting techniques by the portrait artist Don Berry in 1966 and developed a love for painting. Gary was consistently enrolling in courses of interest- he enjoyed learning. Even in his forties, he enrolled in courses for urban design, arboriculture, and park management. His learning became more elevated in his “self guided studies”, delving deeply into complex subjects requiring a high threshold of spiritual wisdom.

BLACKLIGHT, THE POET

He was one of Boston's pioneers of poetry and jazz, working the coffee houses, teen centers, and intellectual gatherings of the bohemian-beatnik fifties and bringing poetry home to Roxbury, where it had not been. He was the “Jazz House Poet” at Wally's, Slades, Estelle's, and Connelly's.

From 1974 to 1984 he produced and hosted the Air-Course in A.R.T. on Harvard Radio, WHRB 95.3 FM — poetry, prose, and great Black music, a weekly program. He later produced Blacklight Productions on Boston Neighborhood Network cable, Channel 23. He left two manuscripts unpublished: BlackLight: The Poet and the Black Artist Bible.

"The oral tradition is our greatest triumph," he wrote. "The use of words either resurrects or destroys man."

THE MUSICIAN

Gary played piano by ear since he was nine years old. He composed many songs at the piano (many from his poems). He did not write songs to make money, he was most concerned with the masses receiving truth and ultimately freedom for one’s self. He was building the oral tradition he preached about — the words and the music arriving together, the way he believed they were meant to.

THE CONSCIOUS PAINTER

He began visual work in 1961. In 1963 he became a founding member of the Boston African American Artists Association, and he would later serve as the President; he organized some of the city's first indoor and outdoor Black art exhibits of the 1960s.

In 1966 he was one of three artists who brought the wall mural concept into Boston's Summerthing, and in 1968 he became the first artist to begin the mural movement on the East Coast. Between 1968 and 1974 he painted murals in strategic locations throughout Roxbury, all of them built on family and moral principles. He painted at least seventy of the several hundred that now exist in Boston. The most notable is Africa Is the Beginning, painted on the Roxbury YMCA in 1969 — a pyramid beneath an eclipsed sun, the oldest surviving mural in the city, and the first thing a generation of Roxbury children understood about where they came from.

He explained his strategy once “...placing murals where the people of the community came and went daily, with the intention that over the years, the visual phenomena would become internalized allowing a positive impact for each recipient.”

In 1972 he started the Worcester Mural Movement with his Public Art Shop concept, training local artists; thirty murals stand there because of it. He was among the first national group of Black artists to tour the Soviet Union, representing New England as a cultural ambassador through the Soviet-American Friendship Committee.

THE LANDSCAPER

For over forty years, Gary was a residential beautification and landscape professional. He was the head groundskeeper at Roxbury Community College. From 1992 to 1995 he ran the Green on Blue program at the Roxbury Multi-Service Center which transformed neighborhood vacant lots into mini-parks while training young people to build and maintain them. The work was similar in purpose and impact as his murals were, only done in soil.

THE COMMUNITY ENTHUSIAST

He was a catalyst in raising the community's consciousness. He served as an art consultant from 1965 to the ICA, the Boston Foundation, New England Conservatory, the Roxbury YMCA, the Roxbury Multi-Service Center, and Summerthing.

He was honored with the Champion of Black Youth Award and named an Outstanding Roxbury Citizen in 1970; recognized as a METCO parent in 1982; cited by the City of Boston in 1988 in tribute to 350 years of Black presence in Massachusetts; given lifetime membership by the Boston Afro-American Artists in 1990; acknowledged by the Metropolitan District Commission for public art in 1996; issued an official resolution by the Boston City Council in 2000 and a citation at the State House by the Massachusetts House of Representatives that same September, honoring the pioneering spirit that prepared the way. In 2002, Books of Hope named him a Visiting Artist for the door of possibilities he opened. He received a National Endowment grant.

THE FAMILY

Gary’s eldest daughter is Mary Pendleton of Baltimore, MD. In August 13,1973 he married Rosa Underwood in Boston, and together they raised Kianga, Tianee, and Alea in Roxbury, during the same years he was painting murals about family principles and self awareness.

Nina Stevenson has been his life partner, and the person beside him over the last 30+ years.

Gary Ames Rickson is survived by his daughters, Mary Pendleton (Baltimore, MD), Kianga Rickson (Charlotte, NC), Tianee Eiland (Columbus, OH), and Alea Harrison (Charlotte, NC). His grandchildren, Tiara, Rafael, Kelly, Toj, Selah, Chans, Quest, Ayla, and Ayris. His sisters, Patricia Lloyd and Paula Martin; his brother, Lawrence Rickson; and a wide host of nieces, nephews, cousins and bonus family members connected through Nina Stevenson. He was loved by all his family, and by a wide community of artists, students, poets, and neighbors who learned from him.

Gary’s life was motivated through various platforms to externalize what was internal and “God-given” with the pure intention of Artistically Revealing Truth (A.R.T).