An Artist's Vision of New Orleans: The Paintings of Alan Flattmann
This stunning collection of renowned pastel artist Alan Flattmann's most evocative work is a must for both lovers of paintings and New Orleans. This artist's vision is, in many ways, a vision of a city that is fading. Flattmann seeks out places and people in which he finds glimpses of a vibrant past. Corner bars, grocery stores, and workmen are brought to the page with the same vitality and detail as sweeping scenes from iconic neighborhoods such as the French Quarter, the Garden District, and Faubourg St. John. Many of the works featured in this volume are held in private collections, shared here for the first time. Jazz funerals wind down city streets, the sun sets and rises on St. Louis Cathedral, and steamboats journey up and down the Mississippi River. Flattmann captures the sights and people of New Orleans, infusing them with light and character. The artist, who is a lifelong denizen of the Crescent City, conjures scenes of historical buildings, bars, famous restaurants, and vintage settings that elicit the beauty of New Orleans.  Alan Flattmann was born in New Orleans in 1946. He studied at the John McCrady Art School on a New Orleans Art Association scholarship and won an internationally competitive grant from the Elizabeth T. Greenshields Memorial Foundation of Canada. His book The Art of Pastel Painting, republished by Pelican in 2007, is a standard textbook for pastel techniques. Flattmann has won many major awards during his career. He is a recipient of the 1996 American Artist Art Masters Award for pastels. In 1991, Flattmann was awarded the Master Pastelist distinction by the Pastel Society of America and has been in Who's Who in American Art since 1981. In 2006, he was inducted into the Pastel Society of America Hall of Fame. Flattmann's work has been shown in more than sixty solo exhibitions and has been featured in publications such as American Artist, The Pastel Journal, Pastel Artist International, Watercolor, and Pratique des Arts. It is in the collections of the Butler Institute of American Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Oklahoma Art Center, Longview Museum of Fine Arts, Mississippi Museum of Art, and Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.  New Orleans native John R. Kemp received his bachelor's and master's degrees in history from Loyola University New Orleans and the University of Southern Mississippi. Formerly a staff writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, he has authored numerous books and contributed to publications such as Southern Accents, Fodor's, Time Out Guides, Louisiana Life, ARTnews, American Artist, and Art & Antiques. He also covers the New Orleans visual-arts scene for the local public television station's weekly entertainment show, Steppin' Out. Kemp is the former deputy director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.