Born in London to a Nigerian father and a German mother, Ransome Stanley studied at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart from 1975 to 1979 and soon became a "master student" under Professor Merz. In 1979, he received a guest studio scholarship from GEDOK Stuttgart and since 1986, settled into full- time studio practice.
Stanley's paintings, drawings and sketches function well to illuminate his own identity, which is shaped by two cultures. For Stanley, his process is just as significant as the finished work. Indeed, the assemblage of different forms to create a new whole best describes Stanley's non- linear thinking process in reflecting on colonial clichés of exoticism, images of Africa rooted in Western concepts of rusticness and innocence as well as idioms of 19th-century bourgeois society.
A self-proclaimed "shifter transitioning between two worlds", he creates planar pictorial spaces in a stark narrative painting style, later causing disruptions by contrasting it with the two-dimensional. By adapting familiar motifs, derived from the canons of history, politics, ethnology, symbolism, and mythological teachings, Stanley persuades his viewers to question cultural knowledge systems steeped within the collective consciousness of humanity.
In parallel to his active studio pursuit, Ransome Stanley also lectures at the Bad Reichenhall Art Academy.