In 1981 Douglas Bourgeois painted Blue Christmas, a work featuring Elvis Presley lying back on a bed beside a fully lit and decorated Christmas tree. Hanging in the blue-draped window just behind him is a bushy holiday wreath.
Douglas Bourgeois hails from St. Amant, Louisiana, where he has lived and worked since 1981 and where his family has resided for several generations. That would seem to make him the kind of artist who, some years ago, would have been labeled “regional.”
Although he was raised on a small farm in the rural southern Louisiana community of St. Amant, Douglas Bourgeois grew up at a time when living in a remote area did not necessarily mean isolation from the cultural trappings of the big city.
In 1993 Whitfield Lovell sought respite from New York City at an artist’s retreat in an old Italian villa. But when he arrived, Lovell, an African American, was horrified to discover grotesque caricatures of black men and women decorating the building’s interior. Turns out the villa had been built by a prominent Italian slave trader with unusual tastes. Taking a personal and artistic risk, he began expressing his reaction in charcoal directly on the villa’s walls.
Jacqueline Bishop speaks with Douglas Bourgeois on 89.9 WWNO Louisiana Artist in January 2003.