“Art is the footprint of where the mind has travelled.” A quote above the entrance of Terrance Osborne’s gallery on Magazine Street, New Orleans.
Expressionist of New Orleans: Terrence Osborne’s fierce and splendid paintings capture a city that exists in head and heart.
The artist
Whereas some artists mimic culture and paint what they see, others are born from culture; they can’t help but create from it and for it. It would be an understatement to say that New Orleans is the subject of Terrance Osborne’s work, the same understatement that showcases Van Gogh as having painted sunflowers or Monet having painted waterlilies. Instead, Osborne has the sensibility of a poet, visually recreating the city he loves through a mix of cultural memory and imaginative will, envisioning the city with whom he shares a soulful affinity. He’s garnered international acclaim as an artist, and it’s no surprise that Osborne’s life in New Orleans has shaped the way he paints the city. Though his dynamic freedom with colour, Osborne expresses his love of culture and paves the way for us to envision his reality.
No place like home
New Orleans, as a city, is iconic in terms of cultural production. A capital for live jazz and the site of Mardis Gras, yet Osborne’s early inspirations are more personal. When we asked him to recount a favourite memory, Osborne recalls being in the fifth grade; his mother, skilled with pastels, lined her bedroom wall with her artwork, “the sun would fall on the wall and bathe her art at the same time every day. It was magical”. The memory is borderline painterly, an impression of sunlight coating the pastel-covered walls, a revelatory moment where memory, magic and place come together. Indeed as a child, Osborne developed a love for antiques and New Orleans memorabilia, which his mother also collected. He recalls how playing under his house as a child gave him a strong sense of how a house is structured and formed, and it’s no coincidence that houses are so prominent in his work, which continuously explores architecture, space and perspective. Some houses are even worn as headpieces in his paintings, acting as an extension of clothing, an extension of culture. ‘The child is the father of the man’, as the idiom goes, and these early years seem notably formative, especially as Osborne’s work seems steeped in child-like splendour. The artist notes how a child sees no fault in painting the sky green, it’s only later in life are they socially ‘corrected’ and told that the sky must be painted blue, “from then on we start conforming and creativity is abandoned. We are all naturally artistic.” Instead, Osborne adheres to his inner imaginative nature and allows his “ideas to grow and honor[s] them when they show up”.
The City
Later in his adolescence, Osborne attended the New Orleans Centre for Creative Arts where he drew inspiration from the work of impressionists like Van Gogh and John Singer Sargent, as well as New Orleans artist James Michalopoulos, whose exaggerated proportions and skewed perspectives would no doubt have a lasting effect on the young Osborne. Claiming that no building in New Orleans is a straight line, this freedom to warp reality became, not a fantastical escapism, but a means of rearticulating the truth of the city he loved, re-animating its essence into bright, frenzied delight.
He later graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from Xavier University in New Orleans. Initially, Osborne was doubtful about whether he could make a sufficient living as an artist, “honestly, I wasn’t sure if I could. I enjoyed it so I did it often… but I didn’t think it was attainable because I’d never met an artist (especially a black artist) who was established”. Inspired by meeting Louisiana-born artist Richard C. Thomas at sixteen (who offered Terrance an apprenticeship), and having his life heavily impacted by Hurricane Katrina, Osborne began to dedicate more time to his art. After a few years in Georgia, having relocated after the hurricane, Osborne moved back to New Orleans. His new paintings shone with a visceral stain-glass intensity. Dynamic, saturated avenues of colour, intimate streets made to look grand in perspective, a past and a city slowly coming back to life, brighter than ever.
The Success
“I’m inspired by culture” Osborne tells us. “I love people and what people produce. I love studying what people wear, eat, live in and say. Of course I’m in love with New Orleans culture.” In 2017, Osborne opened their very own gallery in the Lower Garden District on Magazine Street, ten years after Osborne returned to the city post-Katrina. It has garnered the title of ‘Best Gallery’ in New Orleans with Osborne receiving ‘Best Artist’, awarded just three months after the gallery’s opening. And the cultural impact of Osborne’s art is not to be under-estimated. Originals sell for up the £75k. Prints for up to 10k. Fans have had his paintings tattooed on their bodies, literalising what Osborne has pursued in their work – a means of carrying the city around with you, either on your body or in your soul. Indeed, Osborne’s success and popularity perhaps resides in the immediacy of the work. Though he considers his work more in line with Expressionism than Realism, to approach Osborne with any ‘-ism’ (unless New Orleanism becomes a credible term) would be a misstep in intellectualising a poet and painter of the heart.
Even Osborne’s commercial work comes from a place of love, having been commissioned by important Louisiana institutions such as the Official JAZZ & Heritage Festival which has asked Osborne to create posters on numerous occasions, becoming some of the most collected posters in the world. And in 2006, Osborne gained partnerships with Nike, NBA, Coul De Fondré Winery, and Barq’s. Osborne’s Barq paintings seem almost Warholian in nature, a tribute to the object that’s been present throughout childhood, festivities and daily life. ‘I grew up in New Orleans so what else would I paint?’ notes Osborne. It cements Osborne not as a fantasist, expressionist or pop artist, but a lucid chronicler of life in New Orleans, creating a painted space where fact and fiction meet.
The Community
Osborne has described the electric colours in his paintings as a way of inviting the viewer into the work. Osborne’s paintings are all about inclusion and immersion, and this stretches out beyond the canvas. His paintings have served various community purposes, characteristic of an artist who paints and is inspired by his local community. In 2019, Osborne exhibited work at the Louisiana Children’s Museum, where the artist featured a life-sized playhouse which looks as if it was plucked right out of his paintings. While entering sculptural territory, Osborne’s motivation seemed less to do with medium and more to do with mischief. Osborne wanted the children to feel like they’ve just entered one of his paintings, to interact with the coloured space around them and ‘feel like it’s their house’. The piece is totally interactive, ‘the kids can climb through the windows and touch everything here’. Osborne’s playhouse is a vibrant invitation to the local community to enjoy art, to be an active part of the work.
More recently, Osborne has shown support for his community through the pandemic, and medical hardships in general. His painting ‘Front Line’ pays tribute to the front-line health workers who have been risking their lives during the pandemic. Taking inspiration from Rosie the Riveter, the figure in J. Howard Miller’s World War II poster ‘We Can Do It’, the image presents a Latinx woman in her medical uniform and face mask, also paying respect to the Latinx community who aided in New Orleans’ recovery after Katrina. Osborne also supports those fighting HIV by donating work to Art Against AIDS, a fundraiser supported by local artists and hosted by Crescent Care. An active ally to LGBTQ and HIV communities, Osborne acknowledges how COVID-19 has made it more difficult to receive HIV testing and treatment, and that the two pandemics are equally tragic in terms of the human and cultural cost. Osborne’s work has taken on new meaning in the current pandemic, reflecting a shift in New Orleans’ history.
When we asked Osborne what he would wish for in the future, he explained, ‘I’d make art just as important in school as Math and English. Art tends to be underrated in schools but children naturally love it. Also, after Katrina, a bunch of therapists contacted me to ask if they could use my work to help in their sessions. I’d make it so that art is the aid in every therapy session as a tool for healing’. Osborne has seen great success and respect as an artist, using his work to support his community, to give back to it through the power of his work. Osborne, after all, is more than a painter, he’s an archivist of New Orleans’ spirit, imaginatively eager to transform its history into wonder, to translate the awe of the city into dream-like images. The city has undergone many hardships but it persists through tough times, as do its people, and Osborne’s paintings are a tribute to a vibrant future as well as a rich past; they will forever be part of the city’s ongoing music.