Ann  deLorge:

New Orleans Style

My name is Ann deLorge and I've been painting professionally since 1971 when I moved to New Orleans, La. to live out my fantasies/dreams of making a living as an artist. There was a thriving art colony in the center of the French Quarter at that time; made up of people like I, who knew not much more than dreams; and others, who were there to escape the rigors of some hectic art career or questionable past they had known. Tourists were generally professional businessmen and their wives who frequented the Quarter to shop and play. They came to the artists and paid cash for paintings, portraits and caricatures. Life was good and easy. I learned to paint from trial and error and lots of feedback from other artists as well as from my customers. I started painting with watercolors there because it was easier to deal with in the heat and humidity. Luckily, I fell in love with the medium and stayed with it for 20 + years. I was fortunate in those years to meet and sell to some really wonderful people.  My paintings ended up all over the world and in several galleries (one gave me a very nice one-woman show) and a local gallery owner and I decided to make prints of my work. He put up the money and I, the paintings and a new avenue was opened.

Times change! Tourism became an industry, bringing a different type of traveler to the city--people with plastic instead of cash--looking more for souvenirs than for original artwork. Meanwhile, I had done about all I knew how to with representational watercolors and so started experimenting with acrylics. Acrylics allowed me more freedom to "make mistakes" so I sold my watercolor paints and now just work with acrylics. I began listening to more contemporary jazz while I painted and incorporating that sound into my work. I paint because I love getting lost in the world of colors, shapes, and lines and their interaction. New Orleans is a paradise of those elements with sounds and aromas to match. I have no technical knowledge of Jazz music but I love the thrill I get from listening to Max Roach on his drums and Miles Davis and his lonely sounds and Ella Fitzgerald and on and on. I love to let my pen move across the paper as I watch and listen to the local musicians on the street and in the clubs; the sounds in the buildings, the people, the sky, and the river. It all moves together in and out of harmony.  The colors clash and blend; the shapes curved and almost square overlooking each other in between the lines that hold the balconies together with the parties of people watching and dancing to the parades and their colors rolling down the streets. That’s what I try to capture on my flat surfaces to share with others who "know" the feeling.

I continue to study from books of masters I love. Kandinsky has been my "teacher" for quite awhile now. I don't hope to paint like he did but to incorporate some of his ideas into what I hear and see in this city or wherever I'm painting. As for marketing, I'm focusing on producing prints for cash flow so I can take my time painting the music and colors and lines and shapes that make up the world I'm beginning to know and love.

And then came computers!

--Ann de Lorge
--your e-mail welcome
--Visit Ann Delorge to learn more about her and her latest works.

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