Henry Dubois used to watch his mother draw and paint when he was a child, which is why he began drawing.
Dubois, 63, of New Iberia, said he got into painting and drawing around age 7, when he picked up on what his mother was doing.
Since then, he’s learned numerous types of craft. He draws, paints, carves, gardens, builds furniture, hunts, fishes and is a retired mechanic who fixes his boats and little things for his neighbors.
Dubois had a gallery in New Orleans in the 1980s in the French Quarter, he said. He’s been around for “a while — years,” he said with a laugh.
Dubois stopped painting for a while, but has recently picked it up again. A neighboring piece of property has old buildings that look “ratty,” so Dubois is painting murals on the sides of the building so his neighbor has somewhere nice to look.
“He owes me a barbecue for (painting the walls),” he said with a laugh.
But Dubois never stopped carving or drawing with pen and ink. He has a studio at his house in Bayou Jack.
During the winter, when he can’t be outside because of the cold, he spends hours and hours drawing with pen and ink.
The wood carvings he does year round when “I decide to pick up a piece of wood,” he said.
He carves wildlife mostly — fish, birds, bears — but he also has carved people, including Indian heads.
He can draw anything with pen and ink, he said. He loves drawing old homes and restoring them to their glory days.
“I can fix the building,” he said. “Most are falling down. I can put them back to what they remember it as.”
The bigger drawings take him between 80 and 100 hours, which is why he limits those to two or three a year. But he loves seeing the expressions on people’s faces when they see the drawings.
“They tell me stories. I’ll put stuff in there for because that’s how they remember it,” he said.
He drew an old house for a doctor. He sat down with all 25 of the children, including the doctor, and they all told them what the house looked like.
“They would discuss it and I’d draw. Finally I came out with the little house. It took a long time. That dragged on. Everybody remembered something, and then they’d argue about it. But finally we got it right. It came out really nice,” Dubois recalled.
In a way, Dubois is preserving history. He drew multiple buildings in New Orleans that since have been knocked down or remodeled. He has drawings of old sugar mills, old homes and old plantations, he said.
But artwork is not all about which Dubois is passionate. He and his wife, Dianna, own seven boats. He remodels them.
The Dubois’ just bought a 39-foot long range cruiser they plan to break out this summer with their children and grandchildren, Dianna Dubois said.
He did some cabinet work on the boat and took out some items to make it more his taste, Henry Dubois said.
Dianna said her husband becomes totally engulfed in his work, and the end result is beautiful.
“When he starts something, he’s consumed,” Dianna Dubois said. “It’s amazing. You can look at it when he starts. It’s just shadows, and then it comes to life as he does the paintings.”
Dianna said her husband is “very, very talented.”
“I wish I had that talent,” she said. “He’s got artwork all over Lafayette and different places. He did a lot of commission work in Washington, Louisiana … He’s just fantastic.”
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