Jeremy Price Is Living The Artist’s Dream
By Todd C. Elliott
For seven consecutive years, Lagniappe Magazine readers have rendered the same verdict: Jeremy Price is SWLA’s Best Artist. And in a region known for its independence of spirit and refusal to anoint anything lightly, that kind of unanimity begins to feel less like an award and more like a cultural truth.
Price isn’t just a “best artist.” He is a fixture — part storyteller, part documentarian, part mythmaker — whose work has seeped into the visual memory of the region so thoroughly that it is often encountered before it is consciously recognized. His art doesn’t hang politely on walls waiting to be discovered; it lives outdoors, on brick and concrete, on storefronts and street corners, confronting passersby in their daily routines.
Part Of SWLA’s Character
To revisit Jeremy Price now is not to look backward, but to take stock of how deeply his vision has etched itself into the character of a place.
“It feels great, and it’s an honor that so many people think about art and artists, and think of me, and take the time to cast a vote in my favor,” said Price. “This is the seventh year in a row, and that either means I’m a really good artist or people just like me as a person, and I also happen to make a career out of art. Without everyone else, I couldn’t do that and stay here in Lake Charles. Do I think I’m the best artist here? No. But I do know I’m a pretty badass dude, and what’s most important about that to me? My son and every other child I care for or know find me colossal, and most of them want to grow up and be an artist like me. That’s the coolest feeling.”
Price said that he lives and breathes art into his son’s life by painting and designing things like his son’s Halloween costumes and even birthday cakes.
Price lives the artist’s dream, to inspire and make a living at doing artwork full-time. His larger-than-life works sprawl across Southwest Louisiana like a visual map of shared experience. Murals bloom across building facades, turning once-forgettable structures into landmarks.
For longtime residents, these paintings could well become points of orientation — “turn left at the Price mural” — while for newcomers they function as a kind of unofficial welcoming committee, introducing the region not through slogans but through color, humor and humanity.
Price’s style is unmistakable — bold without being bombastic, playful yet rooted in reverence for local culture. There is an immediacy to his work that suggests conversation rather than spectacle, as if each piece were quietly asking the viewer to slow down, look closer and recognize themselves somewhere within the paint. His latest work has found a new place to take flight.
“The biggest project currently is drawing and painting the Chennault logo on one of the new water tanks at Chennault International Airport and a Flying Tiger design by John McMullen on the other one,” he said. “I just love being out there and wouldn’t mind spending a lot more time at Chennault. Find some planes for me to paint and give me a hangar someday.”
To honor Claire Lee Chennault, the WWII fighter pilot of “The Flying Tigers” and namesake of Chennault International Airport, Taylor Filo of PERC Development construction in Lake Charles also made sure that Price’s artwork would reach new heights. Filo said their new project involves two 500,000-gallon fire/water tanks at Chennault that will supply fire suppression for future expansion.
A big job such as this requires big artwork from Price.
“I’m so proud of Jeremy,” said Filo, who has been a longtime friend. “My buddy has grown up and become a great artist. I’ve known Jeremy for over 20 years; he painted our logo on our first office that we ever bought. I knew he was doing all that mural work in downtown, so (it seemed) a fine opportunity to use him on a larger project. And this is the first one we’ve ever had an opportunity to put Jeremy on.”
That sense of accessibility may be one reason Price’s reach has extended so seamlessly into the commercial landscape without losing its artistic integrity.
Blazin’ Hot
Few local artists have managed to imprint their identity so clearly across a brand as Price has with Blazin’ Hot Chicken. From Westlake to Lafayette, Baton Rouge to New Orleans. These restaurants carry his signature — their walls are alive with color, character, and narrative. What could have been mere decoration instead looks like an evolving gallery, each location a chapter in an ongoing visual story. With a second Lake Charles location on the horizon, Price’s relationship with the brand continues to mirror his broader career: expansive, visible, and deeply woven into the everyday lives of the people who encounter it.
“Jeremy, to me, is just like his art,” said Jacob Fusilier, operations and regional manager for Blazin’ Hot Chicken. “He brings joy to the people around (him). Anytime I see him working on something, I pull over just to just to say ‘What’s up?’ and have a laugh. That always puts me in a good mood. He matches the vibe he puts into his work around SWLA and I think that’s something we all need.”
Walking into a Blazin’ Hot Chicken restaurant is like walking into immersive art. Price brings his street art style indoors at every location of the fastest growing chicken chain in Louisiana.
“Blazin’ Hot Chicken, first off, is my favorite chicken joint, and it’s Louisiana’s first Nashville Hot Chicken restaurant,” said Price. “The owners are Lake Charles locals, and they’ve probably given me the coolest projects and a lot of freedom to just do my thing in Westlake; Lake Charles; Lafayette; Baton Rouge; New Orleans; and soon at the newest flagship location on Nelson Road, less than a mile from Barbe High School, where I and the owners graduated.”
A Sense Of Rightness And Community
Yet, to talk about Price solely in terms of scale or repetition of accolades would miss the deeper current beneath his work. There is a moral imagination at play — an intuitive sense of rightness, community and shared ritual — that elevates his art beyond surface appeal. His paintings often celebrate labor, local legends, and overlooked moments of grace, reminding viewers that art does not have to be remote or rarefied to be meaningful. In a region shaped by resilience, recovery, and reinvention, Price’s work feels less like commentary and more like affirmation.
Nowhere is this more evident than in his recent return to holiday window painting, a practice he set aside nearly a decade ago. For many artists, such seasonal work might be viewed as nostalgic or peripheral, but Price’s decision to revisit it carries a different weight.
Holiday window paintings occupy a unique space in the cultural imagination: fleeting, communal, and tied to memory. They exist for a moment, then vanish, leaving behind only photographs and the warmth of having seen it. Price’s nine-year hiatus from this tradition only heightens the significance of his return, to it suggesting, not a retreat into the past but a renewed engagement with joy, ritual and shared anticipation.
To see Price painting holiday windows once again is reminds us that art can still surprise us, even when it comes from a figure we think we know well. It is a reminder that growth does not always mean moving on; sometimes it means circling back with clearer eyes and steadier hands. As Southwest Louisiana continues to evolve — economically, culturally and aesthetically — Price remains a constant presence, adapting without abandoning the values that first made his work resonate.
Still Curious
Revisiting Price at this moment feels especially timely. Seven years of being voted the best could easily calcify into complacency, but his recent projects suggest the opposite: an artist still curious, still willing to reengage with forms and traditions that connect him directly to the public. In a landscape increasingly dominated by transient images and disposable visuals, Price’s work endures because it belongs where it lives. It is not imposed upon the community; it emerges from it.
While Price has contracted work that needs to be done, his eye still wanders to blank walls around the city. He says he has a wish list of spaces he thinks should be filled.
“I have at least 50 wall spaces in mind in the city that could be painted, not necessarily by me, but by the city,” said Price. “I’d love to paint a ‘Welcome to Downtown Lake Charles’ mural on a building.”
This is not just a story about murals, restaurants or accolades. It is about an artist whose work has become inseparable from the visual language of Southwest Louisiana — and who, even now, continues to repaint the familiar in ways that feel newly alive. Price sees emptiness as a canvas of potential, of what could be for citizens and visitors alike.
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