Luke Judge

By Doug MacCash, The Times-PicayuneApril 24, 2010, 5:00AMView full sizePHOTOS BY RUSTY COSTANZA / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE A front door painted with a giant oak tree nestling New Orleans-style houses in its branches assures visitors they’re at the right house.The cream-colored leather couch seems a bit out of place in artist Terrance Osborne’s studio, just a few paces from the brush-washing bucket and the heap of acrylic paint tubes.

It could be a disaster waiting to happen. But Osborne doesn’t seem worried.

Although New Orleans-style 19th-century houses are a constant theme in Osborne’s work, he lives in a stately 5,000-square-foot, two-story brick Acadian-style home in the Stonebridge subdivision that wraps around a golf course in Gretna.

You can’t miss the place: The front door is decorated with an elaborate Osborne painting featuring a giant oak tree with New Orleans-style houses nestled in its branches.

Just to the left of the lofty foyer, in the cozy room where most people might set up the recliners and widescreen TV, Osborne creates his color-charged artworks.

He says he bought the couch so his wife, Stephanie, would have a nice place to sit when she keeps him company as he paints. She can fall asleep right there if she wants to, when he’s working late at night.

That’s the way Osborne likes it. He doesn’t want to be hidden away while he paints. He wants to be in the midst of things, with his wife and three children nearby.

“I can hear what’s going on around the house, ” he said. “If I’m closed up somewhere, I don’t know what’s happening. I want to know what’s going on with my family. It just feels right.”

View full sizeTerrance Osborne wanted to have his art studio, complete with comfy couch, in the middle of his Gretna home. ‘If I’m closed up somewhere, I don’t know what’s happening,’ he says. ‘I want to know what’s going on with my family. It just feels right.’Osborne, 35, is among that elite group of New Orleans artists, which also includes George Rodrigue and James Michalopoulos, who are able to support themselves with their art — and then some.

That’s Osborne’s 105-foot New Orleans cityscape painted on the Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel. He’s designed a limited-edition athletic shoe for Nike decorated with New Orleans houses and a second-line band, an official New Orleans Hornets poster and the 10-year anniversary poster for Harrah’s New Orleans Casino.

But he’s probably best known for his 2007 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival Congo Square poster, featuring musician Philip Frazier blowing a tuba emblazoned with the word “Rebirth.”

He also created this year’s Congo Square poster, featuring Lionel Batiste of the Treme Brass Band. Notice that the tilting house in the background of the 2007 poster continues in the background of the 2010 poster — in case you’d like to hang them as a set.

Delving into the past