Royal Street Murals by Hayley Roussel Art in New Orleans

The Downtown Development District of New Orleans provided this awesome opportunity to bring all of this beautiful color, the spirit of Nola’s people, homes, and real New Orleans living to the 100 block of royal street. I hope it creates a positive, fun, and vibrant energy in the area. With this mural, I not only wanted to showcase the energy, liveliness, culture and heart of this city, but pay tribute to the past. I created this design to combine my current series of New Orleans’s own shot gun houses with my ‘Ghost House’ paintings. Dynamic and vibrant, the portrayal of these houses are inspired by architecture of shotguns all over New Orleans and the very rich and real colors we see all over the city, that no doubt catch our eye as we walk down an oak-shaded residential area or stroll, floodlit by the lights of the French Quarter. We see these colors in plant life, inside and outside of homes, and especially the people who inhabit them. I wanted to include one of my ghost houses, wherein, the idea is an homage, not only to the people that we have lost in the past, to Katrina, covid, and many other natural and not so natural disasters, but also to the homes that are either vacant, run down, or no longer standing in our beautiful city. Whatever the case, New Orleans, Louisiana, as a whole, and our people, continue to be resilient, strong, spirited, and colorful. I believe the Ghosts of our pasts’ energies are still alive and well. The idea behind the placement of the houses is to feel as though viewers are walking down a residential streets in NOLA (something tourists may not see enough of, for instance, walking around this area).