Tel: 00 44 (0)1736 791811 email Theresa Jones (UK resident)

New Orleans Paintings - Theresa's Story

Specialising in Paintings of Musicians

Theresa Jones at the UK National Exhibition Centre World Renowned Spring TradeFair 2009
New Orleans Art

Theresa near her home in St Ives
For details of her other Art work please visit thesecretgallery.com

 

 

New Orleans – An Experience

Big Easy Introduction

I couldn't see the bigger picture. I had no idea just why I’d had my accident. Why I stumbled and lost my footing as I stepped off the side-walk into the path of three lanes of traffic. I had been in such agony - the doctor had wanted me to wait six weeks before flying back home. Immigration would only allow me four. Yet, within a few short days, the relief from my pain came with mobility. Keeping moving was the answer. Gradually I was back at my easel, painting for longer and longer periods and resting for less. Today, the reason is blatantly obvious.

Fleetingly, I had visited New Orleans the year before. Arriving in Dallas, from London, I was met by my friend Bob Graham with whom I was staying and studying with.

Bob is a highly respected and talented artist, especially in the field of portraiture. For years he had been commissioned to paint images of the New Orleans football team and now these beautiful paintings galleried The Saints Hall of Fame. I was excited that I would be able to share a work trip with him, varnishing those very paintings, to keep them in pristine condition. Just a days work, but long enough for me to get some insight to the city and a brief stay in The French Quarter. I would be able to bring my notion of The Big Easy to reality.

 

Settling In

A year and a month later, I was back in Texas. Bob had decided the time had arrived for him to return to his adopted home of New Orleans. He had asked if I would consider sharing an apartment and studio, with him, for as long as my visa would allow. Such an opportunity could not, and would not, be missed –so there I was, in his home, surrounded by packing cases. Within a week, we had loaded vehicles, and made two long trips, back and forth between Canton and New Orleans. Studio and apartment became both workable and liveable.

My previous visit had teased my expectations of how life would be for me. Situated in Mid-City, between the Mississippi River and the French Quarter to the south, and Lake Ponchatrain to the north. The apartment had good proportions and wonderful tall, elegant windows overlooking City Park. City Park where the bayou tailed its journey from the swamplands with its alligators, and became home to red-eared turtles, nutria, night-herons, egrets, racoons and a whole myriad of other wildlife. The whole bayou area of the park was margined with 800 year old oak trees, with trailing Spanish moss providing much needed shade from the sun. City Park was also a weekend gathering ground for the black communities to socialise in huge family get-togethers. They picnicked and partied - they played jazz and blues. There was a golf course, and tennis courts and a miniature railway. This, too,  was also home to the famous New Orleans Museum of Art and sculpture garden which included some sculptures by the late Barbara Hepworth. This was of particularlinterested me. My home in St Ives, England overlooks the gardens of her studio and home where she lived
and worked during her final years.

Three pretty blocks away from the apartment, past white painted weather-boarded condos, was our studio –part of an old two-storied brick building which had once been a warehouse but was now home to many different artists and specialisms. 

The studio was large, tall and square with one wall of windows overlooking rooftops and the City of New Orleans towards The Mississippi. Our work would soon begin.

Before arriving in Dallas, I knew that I would be painting images of the musicians, and the locality. I had watched them the year before, in a bar or two, yet wondered how I would approach this subject. This was something very new to me and I waited for something to occur.

At over 100 degrees it took a month or so for me to acclimatise. I continually sought refuge in the shade from one crape myrtle tree to the next, on the side-walks, or of the buildings in the French Quarter. Apart from the shade, humidity kept the skin from burning - it kept the skin moist. It was not long before I learned to love this climate and the freedom it offered.

New Orleans is divided by the deep waters of the Mississippi River, hitting the Delta swamp, rich in animal and plant life, before it flows into the Gulf of Mexico. It is the passageway for much of the United State’s imports, and economy. Tourists take trip on traditional old steamboats, such as Natchez or Creole Queen, with their huge, rotating, scarlet red paddles astern which plough their way along the river. There is a road bridge and a ferry service taking foot passengers to other districts of New Orleans This includes Algiers, home of famous Mardi Gras World –an enormous building containing much of the figureheads, statues and other grand masterpieces associated with the floats used during Mardi Gras.

The French Quarter

The French Quarter is mainly centred around Jackson Square, a formal garden with palm trees and banana plants with their giant elongated, fingered leaves. Glossy black wrought iron railings protected the gardens at night. A piazza styled perimeter was a natural focal point for artists offering portraits, and musicians. On the side facing the river, towers the impressive steepled and white façade of the St Louis Cathedral, whilst the other three sides are flanked with decadent colonial buildings, with residential apartments and wrought-iron galleried balconies over gift shops, boutiques, bars and cafes.

It is a rare moment in The French Quarter, whether walking, shopping or sitting in one of the many cafes and bars, to not hear the high-notes of one musician or another, filtering in through the windows and doorways.

The musicians – there are so many of them – pull you in. Somehow, you are drawn to their sounds and their busker’s hats, passed amongst the crowd to collect well-earned dollars. Over a period of many days, (and many dollars later) I had studied, photographed and chatted with many of them. It was not long before I knew what my subject matter would be.

Not the musicians of the clubs and bars which I had assumed I would paint, but the musicians on the street, more the underdog, those who are so much admired and appreciated during the day, but forgotten by night. Yes, these were the people I would paint!

This was not so much a decision, more an obvious choice and it was not long before my first canvas was under-way. This first one measured four feet by three and I approached it with some trepidation but it was not long before I had started my second, then my third and fourth.

I loved what I was doing and soon had many paintings on the go.

 

Daily Life

Breakfast was normally quite a relaxed affair, but once in the studio, I soon became animated and focused. Bob had been commissioned to paint a mural of an orchestra. His canvas stretched almost the entire length of the studio. I was fascinated to watch as he sketched in his people and their instruments, how he arrived at his final composition and eventually ended up with a finished piece.  Bob watched as I completed one painting after another.

Our energy was high and was sustained with frequent breaks - trips out for coffee or lunch, often in the French Quarter, occasionally to cafes in residential areas, or, maybe, in the evening on the shores of Lake Ponchatrain. Often Bob would feel an urgent need to see a film and somehow we just dropped everything and were off to the movies.

Weather Watching

From June to November, local residents habitually keep an eye and an ear on weather forecasts. This is hurricane season, and the fact that a hurricane could be heading their way is always at the back of their minds. In July, there was a warning - a hurricane was in the Gulf of Mexico and could be heading our way. So for a few days, we were more and more intent on watching the forecasts. Yes, this particular hurricane looked as though it would be coming pretty close and we needed to decide whether to evacuate, or stay. In all the years Bob had spent in New Orleans, he had never felt the need to leave. This time he was considering this option. But, we decided to stay. The following day Bob toured the supermarkets and petrol stations, making sure we had sufficient supplies of food, water and candles. If a hurricane did strike, we would have no services for days. Oh, and had we a hatchet in the roof? Many boxes need ticking in such times as these. Thank goodness, the hurricane bypassed us and we were able to return to our work.

My need to spend more time studying, listening to the music and chatting with the musicians of the French Quarter became more apparent as time was moving on. I was aware that my return home was becoming imminent. So,  I would catch the bus from the studio to the French Quarter, which meant that I had to travel through the projects, areas only inhabited by black communities and extremely unsafe for a white person to walk through. Often I was the only white person on the bus. Other times I would use the City Park street-car home, depending on the lateness of the afternoon or catch a taxi. Nowhere in the suburbs was it safe to be out alone after dark –apart, maybe, from the French Quarter.

Continuing to keep an ear on the news, the time eventually arrived when we decided that this hurricane, the one they were calling Katrina, would be the one which would actually hit New Orleans. Once the decision was made to leave, time was of the essence. Bob secured the studio, nailing panels around his life's work of paintings. My paintings were boxed and packaged. We packed some clothes and left our apartment during the early hours of the morning. It was so very eerie. We were aware of other people around the neighbourhood, also quietly packing their vehicles and driving off into the night. We, all of us, had to make decisions about where we were driving to, how and where we were going to get onto the highway, as we knew that all the lanes were now one-way only –out of town. The authorities made it impossible to stop anywhere except in a real emergency. All exits were closed and we drove for almost four hours for a pit stop, and continued to drive another ten hours before we returned from whence we came, Bob's home town in Texas.

The next day, the levees broke, New Orleans was flooded. I was never able to return. Much of my heart remains there. I wish her all the luck in the world.

Theresa Jones.