New Orleans -- Art

In addition to food and music, we also did some art browsing and, in the end, shopping. We love wandering around the French Quarter looking into all the art shops and chatting about what we see with the artists and/or shop owners. We did some of our usual stops, going in to see the works of Michalopolous and Dean Mitchell (both of whom we own works of).

But the revelations, as always, were in seeing new artists. One we say, loved, but did not purchase was a fellow named Peter O'Neill, who has just opened a one-person shop at the farther end of Royal St. He does a lot of mass marketing, selling his originals in glicee reproductions, which is something we aren't overwhlemed by, but his originals are just stunning. Here is one of his new pieces, called "Herald Square" that is a cool rendition of a New York City snow storm.



We also loved a number of his New Orleans based pieces, many of which were based on working man stuff -- there was a wonderful oil of a sous chef preparing a plate for serving.

We were thinking of buying one of his paintings, but in the end we didn't because we saw something we liked better -- a post-Impressionist French painting by Marcel Belle called "La Bateau Lavoir a Paris." The painting depicts a laundry boat on the Sienne from the time of the Paris Exposition in 1937. It just drew us in and we loved it, so "La Bateau" will be coming home with us to Washington, after the exhibition at the Mann Gallery, of which it is part of opens later in October. Here is the image of the painting: