This painting is a composite of a photograph I took one evening in the French Quarter, and another of the young musician. This painting was created with palette knife and a small amount of brushwork for the initial block-in using a limited palette of titanium white, cadmium yellow medium hue, quinacridone red, burnt sienna, raw umber, and ultramarine blue.
The architecture of New Orlean's French Quarter inspired this painting gilded in wrought iron and dressed in centuries of paint, each layer an account of conversations and celebrations, warm shoulders and worn backs, brass bands and fortune hands, wind and rain and hurricane. The late humid night murmurs through half open doors in time to drip tapping of dew drops on balcony spouts and the ratta-tat-tat of the lonely busker.