The Color of New Orleans

“Art is the footprint of where the mind has traveled.” So reads the quote posted at the entrance of Terrance Osborne’s nominal gallery on Magazine Street in New Orleans, the public showcase for his dozens of paintings and brand partnerships (ever heard of a little company called Nike?) making room this February 1 for a brand-new addition: The Color of New Orleans, an opening-night event celebrating the introduction of never-before-seen artwork to the gallery walls. An opening-night reception might seem like a typical routine for full-time artists, but for Osborne, who has been painting professionally for over twenty years, the big reveal demonstrates a slight shift in method.

The artwork itself is unmistakably his, dominated by cityscapes, waterworlds, and parade routes churning with color and verve. Street scenes attain a human-like character, while the humans—when they do appear—turn into something akin to mythologies, the embodiment of the spirit of New Orleans, where Osborne was born and raised. The atmosphere of the gallery, too, lacks the Scandinavian starkness associated with many contemporary showrooms, instead trading white plaster walls for jewel-toned accents, quietude for the beats of Bruno Mars and Beyonce, the click of a critic’s heels for a soft shag rug in the entryway, sterility for the scent of lavender, and blandness for a bowl of candy free for the snacking. Then, of course, there are the visuals: the reason Osborne won New Orleans’ “Best Gallery” and “Best Artist” award just three months after opening a few years ago. Inspired by artists like Vincent van Gogh and John Singer Sargent, but with a personal technique unique to his own intuition, Osbourne’s vibrancy of sensation trumps realism every time.

For Osborne, this type of connection isn’t just a playful take on the art scene—it’s essential to the nature of his work.

“Typically, I’ll start a project, sketch it, take a picture, and share it on social media, then do the same thing when I get to the middle, and then to the end,” said Osborne. “Most of my career has been built on social media, and people have felt a connection to my work because they’ve been part of the process. And I’ve enjoyed that.”

But this is where the change comes in. 

“I’ve been working on partnerships with different companies like Heineken and Coca Cola, and they’ve been great and help pay the bills,” he said. “But it also reminded me to keep working on my own stuff—this time without sharing every step of the process. So these new works are like a little surprise for my followers.” 

Osborne agrees that making art can be mostly a silent experience, a type of work which demands a particular amount of time and concentration. But he still loves people, he says, and sees his work as a communicative act.

“As an artist you have a story to tell, and the only way to tell that story is to produce a body of work to help people understand your language,” he said. “It’s almost like every new piece is another story of your life; it creates a biography, in a way.”

And the audience he paints for, he says, is just as important as the paintings themselves.

“Some artists tend to close themselves off from everyone while they’re working, and they don’t come out of the studio until they’re done,” he said. “They tend to say that they only create for themselves, and that they don’t do it for anyone else. Well, I’ve never gotten on board with that idea.”

If you only created for yourself, Osborne said, you would never feel the desire to show your work, but humans are social creatures. Sharing aspects of ourselves is in our nature. So for Osborne, creating a body of work with a viewer in mind is necessary, even if that viewer transcends the limits of space and time.

“When I was a little boy, I used to collect these little matchbox cars,” Osborne said. “My friends all knew the make and the model of all the cars, but I knew none of that, and I didn’t realize until later that it was because I was collecting the cars for the colors.”

Osborne remembers one car in particular that transformed the way he paints today, a method he refers to as “spiking” the color of his New Orleans palettes.

“It was sort of an orange-y, pumpkin color. Almost a fiery orange,” he said. “And I realized later on that that’s still the color I use to really drive home a certain section of my paintings. So I think that desire to create and share art has always been there.”

Tapping into a childhood memory is one thing—Osborne’s parents were also creatives who encouraged an open-minded view of the world—but much of his work still relies on a little something extra: the unexplained intuition that goes beyond the science of technique. 

“I never know when I'll have mixed the right color,” said Osborne. “I just keep mixing until the color turns ‘electric.’ Once it turns electric and starts to vibrate on the brush, that’s when I put it on the canvas.”

Color carries with it an emotional dimension, a sensory combination that Osborne likes to play up in his work. The city of New Orleans has certainly shared in that sensorial realm, a place of sights and sounds and smells unlike anywhere else in the United States. But in spite of the changes the city has experienced through the years, especially in the post-Katrina age, Osborne says that the New Orleans of his imagination has remained fairly constant through time. 

“I’m the kind of artist who was born of the culture of New Orleans,” he said. “I think artists like me feel, in a way, closer to the abyss, able to bring out new things and interpretations from the same environment. Some aspects of my work have changed, like adding more human figures in some paintings, but the core part of what I do and why I do it hasn’t really changed.”

Osborne understands the privilege of being able to make a living as an artist, and to share that lifestyle with his wife (who also manages the gallery) and his daughter. 

“I had a college professor at Xavier University who reminded me that I was living other people’s dreams, and to not take that for granted,” he said. “That was a wonderful gift he gave me.”

To share in the gift of Osborne’s love for New Orleans, stop by the February open house between 11 am and 5 pm, where the first one-hundred guests will receive a complimentary print of the official event poster. 

terranceosborne.com.