Painting Katrina

By Phil Sandusky

In seventy-six breathtaking artworks, a New Orleans-based painter explores his city before and after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Phil Sandusky is renowned for his plein-air cityscapes, particularly those done in his hometown of New Orleans. In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, Sandusky returned to New Orleans, postponing repairs to his own badly damaged house to begin recording the devastation in his beloved city. The result is a series of remarkable paintings of hurricane destruction executed on location.

Painting Katrina is an unprecedented artistic response to one of the worst natural disasters to impact the United States. This collection contains seventy-six color reproductions of Sandusky's paintings. Thirty-one depict New Orleans before Katrina. Thirty depict the immediate aftermath of the storm, focusing primarily on the Lakefront and the Lower Ninth Ward. The last fifteen were executed approximately one year after Katrina and show the city's painstaking recovery.

Sandusky prefaces these paintings with background information about his style of painting and a compelling journal chronicling his experience exploring and painting the hurricane devastation.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1589804775
• ISBN13: 9781589804777
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.8" x 11.3"

Customer Reviews

Recommended

When I first glanced at the cover and title of this book, I flinched, thinking it seemed somehow exploitive. It's not. It is a truthful record, and a tremendous addition to the history of what happened. The "en plein air" watercolor technique is perfectly suited for capturing both the atmosphere and the built environment of Louisiana. As the author explains, it is not as best suited for long-distance views, but for views on the scale of a city block, it works very well. These paintings LOOK like New Orleans in a way that photographs often don't. They LOOK exactly like the wreckage looked to my eye when I came home from the evacuation. They are a solid documentary testimony and should be part of the historical record. The book also includes paintings from before the flood. This is a very worthwhile book.

An impressively compelling and highly recommended visual journal

Now that we have just seen the second anniversary of one of America's worst natural disasters, "Painting Katrina", featuring the art of Phil Sandusky, is a fitting memorial and tribute to all those whose lives were forever impacted by the force of the hurricane. Sandusky's paintings fully capture in panoramic compositions the devastation of New Orleans and the overwhelming power of hurricane Katrina. Showcasing seventy-six Sandusky paintings (thirty created a year before Katrina, depicting New Orleans in better times; thirty in the immediate aftermath of the story; and the last sixteen painted approximately one year after Katrina), reveal what has been lost, and a city's slow, painstaking attempts to rebuilt. Highly recommended as much for the quality of the art and it's subject matter, "Painting Katrina" is an impressively compelling and highly recommended visual journal chronicling an artist's experience exploring and capturing the hurricane's devastation on a beloved American city.