Brad Thompson’s winding road to a Royal Street gallery
New Orleans artist Brad Thompson shares more than 50 years of painting and the journey to his Royal Street gallery in this POP nakaro video interview. Inside Brad Thompson Gallery in the French Quarter, he explores the stories behind his New Orleans art, from jazz musicians and Louisiana landmarks to a fleur-de-lis inspired by Hurricane Katrina debris. His paintings connect recognizable places with personal experiences, history and imagination.
Thompson completed his first painting at 15 for a high school art assignment, discovering an ability he had never expected. He went on to study fine arts at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette, developing an interest in realism and earning money by painting portraits of people’s homes.
An early opportunity with Chicago art dealer Merrill Chase, years of commissioned paintings and a detour into selling cars helped shape both his career and his understanding of how to sell art.
Thompson discusses how working in car sales restored his confidence with customers and helped him return to painting professionally. Decades later, opening a gallery on Royal Street fulfilled an ambition he had carried throughout his career.
The gallery tour reveals the thinking behind several paintings. “New Orleans Jazz” brings together streetcars, musicians, St. Louis Cathedral and the Superdome. Another work transforms the damaged furniture and household objects he saw after Hurricane Katrina into a fleur-de-lis, preserving reminders of the homes and lives disrupted by the storm.
His subjects also extend beyond Louisiana. Thompson shares a landscape inspired by Rivendell in The Lord of the Rings and discusses the imagery behind “We the People.” Together, the works reveal an artist whose interests in place, faith, history and storytelling continue to shape what he paints.
