Baby-boom Daydreams

December 8, 2012 9:31 AM

Douglas Bourgeois is a living "visionary imagist" artist from St. Amant, Louisiana, a small town between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Bourgeois paints in a hyper-detailed magical realist style, often featuring pop culture icons and everyday objects, and more recently exploring threats to Louisiana's environment. A 2003 traveling exhibit of Bourgeois's work was accompanied by a catalog, Baby-Boom Daydreams. Bourgeois also designed the 2008 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage poster featuring Irma Thomas (scroll down for an image of the original Katrina-inspired painting American Address).
posted by CheeseLouise (5 comments total)

Very interesting. I agree with the art critic who described the 2008 poster he designed as, among other things, somewhat clumsy - yet simultaneously the best NO Jazz & Heritage poster ever produced. There is something very arresting but quite clumsy about his artwork. Thanks for sharing.
posted by arnicae at 9:40 AM on December 8, 2012

Love his work. I first discovered him through this fantastic cover for Tim Parrish's Red Stick Men.

Saw an exhibition of his at the Ogden Museum in New Orleans. Amazing detailed work.
posted by ColdChef at 9:48 AM on December 8, 2012

I must own that Irma Thomas poster. Must. Have. It.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:32 AM on December 8, 2012

I think the "arresting clumsiness" is specifically a product of the way he renders space and depth. There is something a bit off about it, but everything else is rendered so obsessively that it's more of a signature than a problem. It adds to the sharp, feverish quality.



There is something about it that reminds me of certain Japanese paintings.
posted by louche mustachio at 10:59 AM on December 8, 2012

I think the "arresting clumsiness" is specifically a product of the way he renders space and depth.

You might be right about that - to me, there is something that is a bit childish on one hand and simultaneously reminiscent of some of my favorite painted signs in central Africa.
posted by arnicae at 2:13 PM on December 8, 2012