GREG BRIDGES

BIO

I grew up in New Orleans.  As a young kid, I had the freedom to roam the city, something no parent would allow today.  I loved the colorful homes, majestic trees, and horrifically broken sidewalks. I knew then that New Orleans was a special place, but I didn't know how special until we moved to a small farm seventy miles north.  

I first began painting out of necessity in 1993 when I was a Navy lieutenant stationed in Diego Garcia, a small atoll in the Indian Ocean.  Although it was a tropical paradise, the walls of my apartment were made of cinder block, painted stark white. That's where my pursuit of filling blank spaces began, not just artistically, but in life.  

ARTIST STATEMENT 

My paintings are influenced by the colors and "flavor" of the New Orleans I experienced in the early 60s and a deconstruction of my memory from that period.  I expand on those memories through hypnagogic illusions. I want the observer to feel the New Orleans I felt beyond the tourist perspective.