Pittsburg artist gives back after star-studded career

PITTSBURG, Calif. - Before you even get in the doors at the senior art therapy class at the Pittsburg Community Center, you can hear the laughter and the applause, as art teacher Ronald Mcdowell praises and gushes over the work of his students. 

His quiet voice and easy manner bring smiles to a class that is always full. 

It would be easy to focus on the students.

 But it is Mcdowell's story that is a source of pride for the town he calls home.

His life and career have taken him far, but even now he says he is always trying to impress Pittsburg. 

Mcdowell grew up in this East Bay city. 

He says early on his mother knew he had a gift. 

Before he was so accomplished, his mother was buying him art supplies and says when times got tough, it was art that got him through. 

"I was picked on, jumped on and bullied," he said, while remembering his childhood with a wistful look on his face. 

When he got older, he hoped to go to art school and applied for scholarships and admission at art programs across the country, but was turned away even as he says they acknowledged his talent.

He remembers one meeting with a panel of professors where they praised his work even as they told him he would not be welcomed as a student.

"They said people don't come here with your talent." he recalled. "They leave you with it if they're lucky. We don't want to ruin you."

The rejections sent Mcdowell in a different direction.

Hetook his talent and his art to Southern California, where he started painting for musicians and celebrities. 

Then on one 100-degree day, as he was walking down Sunset Boulevard leaving Motown headquarters, he had a chance to meet Joe Jackson. 

While inside the studio, he says the entire Jackson 5 walked out of the recording studio and Michael Jackson stopped to talk to him. 

He says Jackson was familiar with his work. 

"He said, I thought you were a 55-year-old white man. I thought you were a professional artist, " he remembered Jackson saying. "We didn't know you were a kid like us. I said, well, so he tells me, I want you to teach me all this. And that's how we started."

It started a relationship that would last for years. 

Mcdowell says he became Jackson's first art teacher and painted the family as fame enveloped them all. 

He says he even served as an art consultant for the making of Thriller.

His career started and never stopped, and his work can be found across the country. 

His work has been featured in national publications has been displayed around the country. 

His sculptures of Eddie Kendrick and the Temptations can be found in Birmingham, Alabama. 

He is the official artist for the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and an adjunct professor at Tuskegee University.

Yet Pittsburg always calls him home. 

His murals can be found all over the city because when asked, he always seems to come home. 

At the senior center, the office assistant Roezelle Carter grew up in Pittsburg and even as a child knew of his work. 

She says he had a mural then on the city gym that took over the entire side of the building.

His gift, she told KTVU, is in sharing the joy and talent he has with his students. 

After the class she often hears "I can't believe that I did this. I didn't know that I was capable of doing this."  

She points to his patience and his soothing manner and said it instills confidence, "Ronald just seems to be able to bring that out of them."

Student Janice Henry said she never wants to miss class because Mcdowell is so genuine and "so knowledgeable." 

Peggy Phillips has been taking the class ever since it started and said what means the most to her is Mcdowell's devotion. 

"He teaches from the heart." and she told KTVU all the work she has done in his class is on display in her home.

Classes are what Mcdowell fits in, while he is in town working on murals. 

He is painting one now, but his finished works can be found on public buildings, downtown, on businesses and even in Pittsburg Senior High school. 

At one recent rally he said the students called him a GOAT. He was not sure what that meant until his nephew explained it. His nephew told him it was a compliment: Greatest of All Time.

Across the generations, it seems, in this town, those compliments are a balm for the little boy who just wanted to draw but who struggled to be seen. 

Even now, no matter where life has taken or where he goes next for Mcdowell one thing remains constant: "I always wanted to make Pittsburg proud. I wasn't worried about the rest of the world. I was like, I wasn't worried about Michael or Marvin Gaye or all these other people. I met Diana Ross. It was always trying to make my hometown proud."