By the eighth grade he began sneaking into art classes and sharpened his skills in drawing and painting. Richard would go to work with this man on his artwork. Henry asked to see his drawings, and developed a student-mentor relationship. While traveling home on the bus one day, he met architect Ron Henry, a sympathetic stranger who worked as an architect at the Pan-American Life building on Canal St. Richard tried to obey his father's commands, but he made drawings of his teachers and their desks for every subject tablet he owned. By the time he made it to middle school, his father ordered him never to draw again because he thought that it would be a waste of his time and was the cause of his failures in school. Though Richard's talent was increasing, he repeated the 3rd and 4th grade due to a debilitating bout with asthma. Thomas thought to himself, 'Boy, I would love that type of adoration from my parents, too.'Īll throughout grade school, he began to see recognition for his art, where teachers were using his work for seasonal bulletin boards in and out of the classroom, program brochures and booklets. A shy child, he witnessed the excitement and reaction of his parents to his older brother's artwork that was hanging on his 3rd grade teacher's bulletin board. By the time he entered first grade, he discovered finger painting. He began to delight in the letter forms and started drawing and creating characters from the letters of the alphabet. His uncle Nathaniel Thomas (known to many as Raybadonna the magician) sat him on his knee one day to teach him his ABC's. He recognized that he was to be an artist at a very early age of 4. Thomas was born in Bogalusa Louisiana 1953 and moved to New Orleans at the age of two.

Draw with jazza art gallerey