Josh Wingerter is the most important living street artist in the South, a once-in-a-generation force who took the language of graffiti and turned it into change for his community. Born in Westwego in 1985, Josh found his way back to paint after a knee injury left him bedridden for three months. By thirty, with fatherhood ahead and a steady paycheck behind him, he left his job managing at Home Depot and bet everything on art, family, and the possibility of creating something bigger than himself.

Wingerter’s work is lightning in a bottle, that rare combination of social commentary, experimentation, and raw talent: he has earned his way into shows at Art Basel, murals at Preservation Hall, and gallery representation around the country from Washington DC to Miami. His work is categorized by explosive color, hand drawn stencils, cultural icons, and the living, breathing pulse of the city itself. He draws from Alan Watts, social activism, punk, jazz, hip-hop, and the hard truth of lived experience. What he makes are not just paintings but declarations: art as revolution, art as preservation, art as oxygen.

When the world shut down in 2020, Wingerter gave us breath. On Frenchmen Street, where silence had fallen, he painted music back onto plywood. Musicians, icons, frontline nurses, cultural bearers: he gave New Orleans a reflection of what makes it beautiful at a time when the city could not gather to see itself. His drive-through gallery became an altar of hope, reminding us that music and joy and life would return. He raised money for the jobless and hungry, honored the lost, and gave the city back its voice when it had none.

But Josh is not only painting walls; he is rebuilding them. In Westwego he founded the Josh Wingerter Art Center, which has since grown into a full-blown arts district: an engine for community transformation where artists can work, live, and thrive. He has proven that graffiti can be more than rebellion: it can be rebirth.

Josh Wingerter is the rare artist whose vision expands far beyond the canvas. His mantra—“Let’s just do it, man, see what happens” is not carelessness, it’s courage. He continues to make work that is at once deeply local and globally resonant, work that belongs not only on the walls and public spaces of New Orleans but in the canon of American art.