Ronnie Goodman was born in 1960 in Los Angeles and raised in San Francisco. He was a self-taught artist, long-distance runner, and urban bicyclist. His love of art began at the age of six when he started drawing. Growing up in San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood, he discovered his passion for jazz, and music remained a recurrent theme throughout his creative work. Life’s journeys took him away from art, but he rediscovered it through the Arts in Corrections Program at San Quentin State Prison. He continued to make art—including a number of murals—upon his release, often addressing mass incarceration and homelessness, both of which he had experienced personally. His work is featured in Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration at MoMA PS1, and has also been exhibited at The Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens; The Mission Cultural Center, San Francisco; and the San Francisco Public Library. His work has appeared in the New York Review of Books and The New York Times, and is held in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Goodman passed away in a housing encampment in San Francisco’s Mission District on August 7, 2020.