The history of New Orleans and its Jazz Musicians told in paintings.

Artists Theresa Jones and Bob Graham have used modern art techniques to capture the essence of New Orleans Jazz. Their work developed out of experience on the streets of New Orleans living alongside and working with local jazz musicians.

Wynton Marsalis said that, "Jazz is something Negroes invented, and it said the most profound things -- not only about us and the way we look at things, but about what modern democratic life is really about. It is the nobility of the race put into sound ... jazz has all the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping. It is the hardest music to play that I know of, and it is the highest rendition of individual emotion in the history of Western music."

Iconic Jazz musicians and the leaders of Modern and Contemperory Art.

New Orleans, 'The Big Easy ', was the birth place of some of the most famous Jazz musicians of all time: Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and the Great Louis Armstrong.

Always new, always improvising, revolving, evolving, and taking chances that mean no one knows exactly where the music will go. By its very extemporaneous nature - experimentation, emotion and innovation around a theme: jazz readily lends itself to being recreated in visual form.

In the development of Modern Art styles, Abstract Art arrived on the world scene after Cubism and Surrealism. Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian were ground breaking abstract artists. Then came the Pop Art Movement with Warhol, and David Hockney. Pop Art takes its name from "popular art" because these artists were reacting to the overly reverent attitudes in the Abstract Movement. Pop Art and Op Art, which arrived a little later, were art that was fun.

Bob Graham

In the works of New Orleans French Quarter artist Bob Graham, Modern Art forms add background and mood for iconic images of Musicians with their instruments.

Theresa Jones

In the works of Theresa Jones of the UK, the vignettes of the Musician in the atmosphere of New Orleans are an evolution of Modern Art and evoke the mood of the music in the streets. NewOrleansJazz.org is a celebration of the Jazz musicians of New Orleans who play for the love of the music as well as their supper.

Art Featuring Jazz from New Orleans

The site galleries show an example of the fine art work created by Theresa and Bob during the time leading up to Hurricane Katrina. These giclee prints of jazz musicians on the streets of New Orleans are iconic Jazz Art images, paintings of a New Orleans that may never be seen again.

The French Quarter

Two artist's view of French Quarter Jazz and how it informs their "Jazz Art".

Artist's Statement - Theresa Jones

Theresa Jones, U.K. resident, living in St Ives, Cornwall, spent three months leading up to Hurricane Katrina painting the jazz musicians of the French Quarter. This is her statement:

"My initial visit to The French Quarter, New Orleans was intriguing, but fleeting. My return visit was compelling, and lasted more than three months.

The French Quarter held a fascination for me. A fusion of decadent Spanish and French architecture, with features including elegant painted clapboard exteriors, window-shutters, balconies over banquettes, and highly decorative wrought-iron work. Often these were hung with throw-beads and masks associated with Mardi-Gras, the annual mega-carnival of America's Deep South. Smells of Cajun/Creole cuisine, coffee, beignets and other local delights, together with strains of jazz and blues melodies, filled the streets. Music filtered through windows and doorways, courtyards and cafes, surrounding Jackson Square and the grid of streets that unfold from there.

Predominately black, French Quarter buskers are well schooled and accomplished musicians, playing Dixieland, modern jazz, rhythm and blues. They nourish their passion for music. They love what they play and they play what they love. They have a need to entertain, share sounds, movements, and emotions with those who care to stop a while and listen, in the blistering summer sun, or sheltered in the shadows of the buildings.

I chatted with many of these local performers, studied them, listened to them, and finally, painted them, together with vignettes of their milieu. I continued to paint until making the final decision to evacuate New Orleans, away from the path of hurricane Katrina, which devastated and flooded the French Quarter.

Following my intuition, I recorded my view of life of the French Quarter and her own orchestra of jazz musicians - an historical record of life, pre-Katrina. New Orleans will pick herself up and continue to be a major player in America's music and culture. Her future is good and I look forward to continue painting my impressions of The Big Easy."

Artist's Statement - Bob Graham

Bob Graham has lived in New Orleans for over 25 years and painted French Quarter life and its jazz musicians for all that time. This is his statement:

"Music and painting are intertwined by their very nature. Both use rhythms, beauty, climactic moments or focal points, and the interplay of balance and interest.

New Orleans and jazz are also intrinsically intertwined. The streets resound with music. My paintings are my response to my everyday life as a French Quarter artist for 25 years, and my early training as a modernist painter. The movement, the colors, musicians hitting the "high note", the sense of immediacy of being in the moment, are the means I use to depict my adopted city and the people who play jazz there."