Author: John R. Kemp

When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable, and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place — a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow…

Spirit House,” “Circle Dance,” “Middle Passage,” “Dance for My Father,” “Spirit Gates” – all are but a few names the nationally acclaimed New Orleans artist John T. Scott gave to a remarkable lifetime of art that gained him a name…

A young woman in a flowered dress floats dreamily across the canvas in a dark blue sky. Her blond head rests on one shoulder. Ducks fly by while in the distance mosquitoes seem to swarm in a swirl of white…

A s the early morning fog lifts from the river and settles on Jackson Square, an eighteen-wheeler grinds its gears to beat the stoplight on Decatur Street. The musty smell of the Mississippi River and roasting coffee from upriver fill…

Frank Kelley Jr.’s “The Power of Jazz.” When painter Frank Kelley Jr. discusses his art, he talks about opportunities, stories, decisions and spiritual journeys. His images of the northern Louisiana landscape or jazz musicians suspended silently between riffs are about…

Billy Solitario, “Three Egrets;” Over the last 25 years, the Louisiana art scene had grown and prospered in cities across the state, especially in south Louisiana. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita almost swept it away. Derelict buildings in rundown Main Streets…

Duck in Audubon park, New Orleans. Louisiana’s natural landscape is a dreamy world for painters and photographers. Its bayous, rivers, primeval swamps and the undisturbed and timeless life that drifts in the shadows can be unsettling but magnificent. It has…

John Darling Haynes and the Southern landscape by John R. Kemp Like alchemists, artists use canvas and palette to create imagined or real images of the world, its beauty, drama or the play of light upon the land. Others paint…