 Hayley Roussel - Peace to New Orleans.jpg)
Artist Statement: The images I chose to demonstrate the piano design are of some of the previous paintings that I have done. The front will look similar to the photo I selected, as will the back, but it won't be specific to Tulane (See Tulane flag in 'back design' photo) I will likely take that sign out and meld the front and back designs by adding more beads in the trees to represent our colorful city of New Orleans, and I would also like to add more street lamps similarly styled to those in our beautiful city. The file I chose to represent the side design has one Iris front and center. I would like to paint one flower (each a little different) on the right side and one of them on the left side, tying together all sides to the front and back with more tree branches, irises way in the background of the composition, and other greenery/ plant life prominent to New Orleans. I believe the peaceful/ beautiful symbolism of the individual flowers, blending with the natural scenes, and strong, old, wisdom of the oaks will make for a really powerful, colorful, and hopeful composition.
Hayley Roussel is a contemporary artist currently living and working in New Orleans, Louisiana. Born in 1994, Hayley grew up in St. Charles Parish, where she was in the Talented Art program from Elementary school until graduating from Destrehan High School in 2012. She ultimately graduated with a BFA from LSU in Baton Rouge in 2017. At her time at LSU, she majored in studio art with a concentration in painting and drawing, studied art abroad in Ballyvaughn, Ireland in 2015, participated in painter’s league, and exhibited her paintings in LSU’s Foster gallery and beyond. Hayley is a supporter of the arts, especially public art, and ARTS New Orleans. She has partnered up with several organizations including New Orleans’s own Downtown Development District, to create two murals on Royal Street for their vacant storefront program in 2021. This year, she is participating in NOLA Artist Incubator’s 2023 Art in the Park cohort and working with the Paul Mailliard business and arts initiative in her home parish, hoping to help them bring more art to Old Luling. She has also participated in Live Painting events in and around New Orleans, most notably, the international ‘Art Battle’. The Louisiana native is a self-proclaimed ‘emerging artist.’ A practiced painter, muralist, self-published poet, business owner with an online art shop, as well as a commissioned-based painter, she is currently focused on creating whimsical, acrylic paintings in her Bayou St. John home studio. You can also purchase her work from Revival Art House in Ponchatoula. Dynamic and vibrant, her most current and ever-evolving series focuses on the streetscapes, architecture, gardens/courtyards, and many other distinctive features of New Orleans. This series focuses on everything from shotgun houses and cemeteries to their porches, mausoleums, and religious statues, as well as other elements uniquely NOLA, like Mardi Gras floats, colorful shot gun houses, and native plants. This series enhances and saturates color, especially, the artist’s favorite blues and greens, while sometimes abstracting and melding together different N.O. and Louisiana locations, in an attempt to capture the true spirit and soul of the amazing place(s) we call home.
