A sketchpad is well suited to the environment of music clubs. Often the light is low but I can see just enough to translate something of the scene to paper. All drawings are started with pencil, locating the preliminary image on the sheet of paper. Fountain pens are utilized to create the final drawing. Later in my studio, I might add watercolor or gouache.
I moved back to New Orleans in late 2011. I knew Preservation Hall and a few other places, and then a friend introduced me to Frenchmen Street and Palm Court Jazz Cafe and I started drawing musicians again. A lifelong fascination with music and the people who produce it is a strong motivation, and when the music begins I can no more not draw than not breathe.
I am a self-taught artist, and have lived and worked in many places, most recently for 17 years in Santa Fe, NM with my husband, writer John Heller. I was born in 1956 in New York City, the daughter of the NYC/NOLA artist Noel Rockmore. My parents divorced when I was a baby and I didn't see my father again until I was 20, whereupon I moved to NOLA to live with him. We enjoyed a close friendship until his death in 1995.
While living in NOLA in 1977, I created a mural on an interior courtyard wall of the historic Skyscraper Building (as seen in this photo taken by Johnny Donnels in Feb-March 1977), and was a Fence Artist on Jackson Square. Five of my early Jazz drawings were published in Howard Mitcham's book Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz by Addison Wesley in 1978, still in print.
I moved back to New Orleans in late 2011. I knew Preservation Hall and a few other places, and then a friend introduced me to Frenchmen Street and Palm Court Jazz Cafe and I started drawing musicians again. A lifelong fascination with music and the people who produce it is a strong motivation, and when the music begins I can no more not draw than not breathe.
I am a self-taught artist, and have lived and worked in many places, most recently for 17 years in Santa Fe, NM with my husband, writer John Heller. I was born in 1956 in New York City, the daughter of the NYC/NOLA artist Noel Rockmore. My parents divorced when I was a baby and I didn't see my father again until I was 20, whereupon I moved to NOLA to live with him. We enjoyed a close friendship until his death in 1995.
While living in NOLA in 1977, I created a mural on an interior courtyard wall of the historic Skyscraper Building (as seen in this photo taken by Johnny Donnels in Feb-March 1977), and was a Fence Artist on Jackson Square. Five of my early Jazz drawings were published in Howard Mitcham's book Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz by Addison Wesley in 1978, still in print.
