The life-size figure is dancing, her arms thrown up in pure glee and her face turned toward the sky. The hand-lettered words seem to rush from her mouth like a melody, a mission, a sermon:

“I sho nuff brought the sunshine in my life when I picked up a paintbrush.”

This is the joyful work of outsider artist Missionary Mary L. Proctor, painted on a wooden door in 1999 and now hanging on a wall in the Baton Rouge home of Rip and Suzie Reeves. And much like the sunshine that Proctor proclaimed in this piece, the Reeves home itself is a source of joy, thanks to a profusion of exuberant artworks that make this place feel like a perpetual celebration.

Outsider art—which the brochure for the inaugural Outsider Art Fair in New York City in 1993 defined as “naïve, self-taught, visionary, intuitive”—makes up the bulk of the art collection that fills the rooms of the Reeveses’ home near the LSU Lakes. Rip was a portfolio manager on Wall Street when that first Outsider Art Fair was staged at the historic Puck Building, and he and Suzie were in attendance at the fair, accompanied by an art-enthusiast friend from their time at LSU. It was there that the couple purchased their first piece of outsider art, a painting by Florida artist Woodie Long.

“I had some trader friends who were into art, and they would take me to galleries in the city,” says Rip, whose main piece of art at the time was a Tiger Stadium poster hanging above the sofa in his New York apartment. “However, the first real art show I went to was the Outsider Art Fair. My friend introduced us to Woodie, who had come up for the fair, and Woodie Long pieces were my first and second purchases there.”

It was the beginning of what has become a lifelong interest in this style of self-expression. “I generally was drawn to the subject matter of the paintings,” Rip says. “Living in the North, it was a nice reminder on my home walls of the South, our families, and memories of growing up.”

Rip and Suzie would spend nearly 40 years hanging onto those memories of their early lives—Suzie grew up in Houma, and Rip is from Harahan—while working and raising three daughters in New York, Connecticut, Boston and New Jersey. All three girls wound up graduating from LSU like their parents, who met when Rip was a lifeguard at the Huey P. Long Field House pool and Suzie stopped by for a swim. So when Rip decided to retire at the end of 2022, the couple set their sights back on south Louisiana.

“We wanted to move back home to be near our families and back in the South for good,” Rip says. “We narrowed it down to New Orleans or Baton Rouge, but I was given the incredible opportunity to teach at our alma mater, LSU, so Baton Rouge won.”

An online search for a home led the couple to this residence within walking distance of Rip’s post-retirement teaching gig. A fortuitous phone call connected them with listing agent Albert Nolan, who gave them a two-hour FaceTime tour of the house and property on Good Friday that was enough to have them sign on the dotted line without seeing it in person.

“We wanted to be in this neighborhood,” Rip explains. “We knew the area, and we saw in the listing that it was one acre with mature trees. We knew that you can always fix the house.”

Albert was more familiar with this property than the typical real estate agent might have been, since in his other professional role as owner of Nolan-Kimble Interiors he had completed an interior redesign of the 1940s-built house for its previous owners. So when Suzie and Rip asked Albert for a decorator referral, he already had a unique insight into how to best improve the home’s function and aesthetics.

“When we sold our house up there, the buyers asked if they could buy all of the furniture,” Rip says. “We knew we would need help with this house. And once Albert saw our artwork, he got a real clear picture of what we’re all about.”

Albert helped to connect the Reeveses with contractor Solomon Carter of Amelia Fine Construction to oversee a renovation project that would involve the reconfiguration and repurposing of several rooms. Meanwhile, Rip began sending Albert videos and photos of the paintings and sculptures he would need to design the Baton Rouge home around.

“Every piece of art they have is meaningful to them,” Albert says. “The main issue was that the art would need to fit in the house. They were concerned about wall space and ceiling heights. I immediately thought of a gallery—I knew we needed a neutral palette and to make the house feel like an art gallery without losing its authenticity.”

Albert chose Benjamin Moore’s “Balboa Mist,” a soft pale greige, as the backdrop upon which all of the Reeveses’ art would be hung. The hue was used in nearly every first-floor room, except for what had been the dining room but now serves as a music room and houses the family’s grand piano as well as space for Suzie to play her trumpet. Here, Albert opted to leave untouched the darker neutral shade that he had chosen for these paneled walls years earlier.

Since the former dining room was being reimagined as a spot for making music, the couple needed a different location for their dining room. The former formal living room, located just off the entryway, was ideal both for placing a large dining table and for displaying several of the largest pieces from the couple’s art collection. Rip and Suzie had a live-edge wood table built to suit the space by artisan Elvis Duarte of Wood Touch in their former home state of New Jersey, and Albert added blue velvet side chairs as well as neutral end chairs with embroidered backs.

The long living area situated just beyond the new dining room had been divided by a set of ornate columns from the old Goudchaux’s department store. The new owners opted to eliminate those as structural elements, but if guests look closely at the dining room walls, they’ll spot a segment of one of the hand-carved capitals that once crowned the columns—now serving as a base for a Mark Winter antlered metal sculpture. Everything old is truly new again in this space.

The living area had previously been connected by a pass-through bar wall to a central room that had at various times served as a bedroom and then an office. The Reeveses removed the bar opening and transformed this space into an entertaining hub, complete with bar-centric appliances and cabinet space on one long wall and an old church pew against the other. A small tiger-print rug in this space mirrors the runner on the nearby stairs; both introduced as homages to the family’s alma mater.

The original plan for the kitchen renovation was to paint the dark-stained cypress cabinets, but ultimately, the couple decided to rip them out and start again with clean-lined cabinetry that extended further down the wall toward the breakfast room. That afforded them the opportunity to create a streamlined breakfast nook with a built-in banquette and a custom table created by a member of the Amelia construction team. The crew also carved out a small kitchen niche in a previously unused space beneath the stairs; the spot now serves as a coffee bar.

“We left the structure of the house as a traditional base but added modern elements like fixtures and the waterfall edges on the countertops,” Albert says. “We didn’t want to get so modern that the house would lose its historical integrity.”

The primary bedroom suite borrowed a few feet of space from what is now the bar, giving the couple a little more room in their bathroom. A sun-filled enclosure off the bedroom has become Rip’s office, with a desk custom built by the same artisan who created the dining room table. “He wanted to be surrounded by the outdoors,” Albert says. “That used to be a porch long ago but then was walled in. Now, this has probably one of the prettiest views in the house.”

The renovation took more than a year to complete, with the Reeveses having already moved to town and living in the house during much of the construction. While the dust was flying inside, dirt was being overturned just beyond the back doors in an effort to open up the backyard, which had previously been so thick with vegetation that the pool was not visible from within the house. “It was a complete overhaul,” says Ben Sommers of Grounds Pro, who, with his wife Sydney, secured the assignment to tackle this exterior makeover project by presenting the Reeveses with an artwork-inspired proposal. “If you look at this property from a bird’s-eye view, it really is like a piece of art. We wanted to keep some of the same style but to update everything.”

The Sommerses drew inspiration from the work of Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx in devising a design that would flow seamlessly from the street side of the house to the long backyard. “One of the main focuses was keeping several cherished camellias, oaks and magnolias on the site,” says Ben, adding that the previous owners had meticulously tagged every camellia on the property.

The landscape plan included ensuring that Suzie and Rip could easily see out to the pool and to a pair of massive old magnolia trees, both from swivel chairs in the rear section of the living room and from rocking chairs planted on a porch just outside their bedroom suite. Here, the couple added a door in the midst of existing tall windows to provide easy access to their backyard retreat.

Both of these seating areas get plenty of use these days—when the couple is not out and about. A childhood classmate of Suzie’s lives next door, and many of their family members, fraternity brothers and sorority sisters are close by. And they love to dine out at DiGiulio Brothers and BLDG 5. “It’s been a lot of fun getting re-engaged,” Rip says.

When friends and visitors stop by the house, the couple is happy to point out the origins of each piece of art as they walk through the renovated rooms. There’s the jewel-encrusted cow skull from Texas, where one of their daughters lives; two traditional works from a vacation to Italy; the abstract painting that came home with them from a New Year’s Eve layover in Amsterdam; and another of a chicken that they found during a whitewater rafting trip to Quebec. The music room alone is replete with creations by well-known outsider artists, including Alabama’s Mose Tolliver and Jimmy Lee Sudduth and Georgia preacher Howard Finster.

In one corner of the dining room now hangs a larger-than-life painting of a face created with a palette knife by French artist Françoise Nielly. Rip discovered this painting in Paris shortly after he and his daughters had completed a swimming relay in the English Channel. This is just one of several bits of evidence around the house of the adventurous activities the family has engaged in around the world, from the triathlons Rip and Suzie used to race together to the Everest Marathon that saw the family running from the base camp of the world’s tallest mountain through the sherpa trails of Nepal.

“When we travel, we always ask if there’s an art district—not a place to buy fancy art but just a place where artists hang out,” Suzie says. “Each piece has a story—a place that we have traveled, an artist we have met, or just a city where we have lived.”

But nothing here feels too precious, and the couple easily mixes paintings by Rip’s parents and their daughters among those created by well-known artists. Needlepoint birth announcements for all three girls, lovingly sewn by Suzie’s sister, hang upstairs amidst more paintings in bedrooms that stand ready to welcome the youngest generation home.

Home—it’s where this family finally feels that they have arrived after a whirlwind of a life spent away. Though so many of the Reeveses’ art pieces bear the name “outsider,” that’s one label that can’t be placed on this home’s occupants. With deep roots in south Louisiana, they are embracing a joy built on finally being back where their hearts have always been.