The idea of painting New Orleans street signs came in late 2007. I had always been intrigued by the names of the streets in New Orleans – names like Arts, Music, Painters, Humanity, Piety, Desire and more. The idea to paint some of these just stuck in my head one day. The goal was to provide snapshots of New Orleans with three street signs grouped together. I had not painted in some time, but I dug around and found paint, brushes and a few small canvas sheets. From the start I wanted to use two of the primary colors – red and yellow. Since I didn’t have any blue, blue didn’t come to mind until later. The scheme was black, white, red and yellow. I settled on “Arts,” “Music,” “New Orleans,” as the streets for my first painting. I painted until the piece was finished. The streets names said a lot about New Orleans, but read together, the painting did not have a poetic ring. Soon I had painted over New Orleans and replace it with “Melody.” “Arts,” “Music,” “Melody” had a ring. The blue, red and yellow color scheme didn’t come along until early 2008.
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