Velox Benjamin Ward was born in Texas on December 21, 1901 to "Fred" Frederick Bowers Ward and Laura Carrington. Velox Benjamin Ward married Jessie Bain Howell and had 3 children. He passed away on December 19, 1994 in Texas, USA.

In some ways Velox Ward is Texas's answer to Grandma Moses. He began his first painting at the age of sixty. Within several years Ward was recognized as a major creative contributor to the genre of 'folk art' or 'primitivism'. Today such major institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, include examples of Ward's art in their permanent collections.

Velox Ward, Sr. was a self-taught memory painter. In 1960, Ward began painting at age 59 at the request of his family. Like many other great Folk artists, Ward turned to his memories of growing up in rural East Texas during the early part of the twentieth century.

He is known youthful recollections of his community, including outdoor scenes of ginning cotton, tending a garden, butchering meat, and napping on the porch.

Unlike most other memory painters, he refused to rely on the idealized nostalgia of days gone by and strove to infuse his work with as much realism as possible.