Charles Ramsburg was born in 1942 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the shadow of the modern steel industry. He was expected to continue in that business tradition. The arts were not taken all that seriously. Intuition was frowned upon, especially for men. To be called by the arts was somewhat terrifying. That struggle to extricate one’s heart from the confines of the business model became a big part of his life’s journey. In 1962, he enrolled in the fine arts program at the San Francisco Art Institute. It was there that he discovered that being born blind in one eye made his visual experience quite complicated. He became extremely interested in the complexities of two-dimensional vision.

Although still jostled by the echoes of his early conditioning, monocular sight, and years of wandering and exploring, he moved to Santa Fe, NM. Learning to listen to what Kandinsky called “inner necessity” became his way of searching for that mysterious voice that informed his work.

He now lives in New York City with his wife, Michele Zackheim.