Lou Herron Jordan, LWS

4644 Bancroft Drive New Orleans, Louisiana 70122 504-282-1393

Lou Jordan was born in Shanghai, China, the daughter of a naval officer stationed there at the beginning of WWII. She grew up in San Francisco, Hawaii, and Alexandria, Virginia, one of five sisters, and attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, majoring there in Fine Arts.

As a single parent of four children, her art was put on the back burner until her youngest went off to college in 1988, when she started taking courses at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA. She fell in love with watercolors during a visit to an exhibit of American Watercolorists and decided to take up this most challenging medium, enthralled with its color, freshness, and energy.

At the Torpedo Factory she studied with Joe Mayer, a former student of Edgar Whitney, and Marge Alderson. Relocating to New Orleans after a second marriage in 1995, she and her husband decided it was time to devote her full energies to her lifelong dream, and she has been studying at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts with Katalin Gergo, Carol Peebles, and Auskelis Ozols for the past seven years. She has also studied with Jack Beal, Sondra Freckelton, Milford Zornes, N.A., Jeanne Dobie, AWS, NWS, Stephen Quiller, AWS, and Cheng Khee Chee, AWS.

In her first year of exhibiting, Lou won a First Prize at the 1996 LWS Spring Members' Show, an Award of Merit at the New Orleans Arts Association 1997 National Exhibit, an Honorable Mention at the 1997 and 1998 LWS Spring Members' Show, and was accepted into the Masur Museum Exhibit in Monroe, LA, and Fest For All in Baton Rouge. In 1999 she won First Prize in the Louisiana Watercolor Society's Spring Member Show, and the Faculty Award for Watercolor at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts. For five years in a row she has had paintings juried into the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts Student Exhibit, and has taken part in the Whimsies Show, the Pirate's Alley Fair, and the NOAFA Art Fair. She served as Chairman for the 1997 and 1998 Louisiana Watercolor Society's 27th and 28th International Exhibits, and was elected President of the Louisiana Watercolor Society in June 1997 and again in 1998. She became a Signature Member of the Louisiana Watercolor Society in 2001, achieving this feat in three years. In 2002 she won a second prize in the LWS Member Show. She has appeared in many group shows in the New Orleans area, and has been represented in the Upstairs Gallery in Bay St. Louis, MS and the Galerie Eclat in New Orleans. Her work is currently on view at her Bancroft Drive gallery. Lou is mentioned in Who’s Who of American Women, and one of her paintings is featured in International Artist’s magazine’ 100 Ways to Paint Flowers and Gardens. She has taught at the Jewish Community Center and now teaches at Studio Angelico, her studio in the MidCity area of New Orleans.

As a Lay Dominican and a deeply spiritual person, she loves to paint the luminous quality of light - as it is reflected on water, through the transparent petals of flowers, or in the endless summer sky. To her the light is an expression of the love poured out on all creation by the Great Creator of the universe.

Email: BayouLou222@aol.com

Website: www.LouJordanArt (in near future)