LAROSE, La.--Bobby Pitre dabbed paint onto a canvas inside the Southern Sting Tattoo Parlor and talked about the man-made disaster that threatens the only way of life he's ever known.

Except for an assignment in a high-school art class, Pitre, 33, had never painted a portrait until an oil rig operated by BP exploded on April 20, sending millions of gallons of crude pouring into the Gulf of Mexico.

Since then, he's painted several, including one of BP CEO Tony Hayward with buck teeth and donkey ears.

"I was in a bad place. That's why I started painting these," he said recently. "This is my way of screaming to people."

Pitre's art has become an outlet for his rage. Income at the tattoo parlor is down 50% since the spill. Unemployed sailors and oil workers don't spend money on tattoos.

But his anger is about more than money.

"I could go anywhere in the world and make a living," he said. "But I don't want to. This is my home."

His largest piece so far, done in cooperation with an artist friend, is a mixed-media tableau splashed across the exterior of the tattoo parlor at a bend on Louisiana Highway 1, a busy corridor to the Gulf. Dark and desperate, the mural incorporates a bloody torso and a wraith, cloaked in oily black and bearing a BP logo, extending its arms in a deadly embrace toward an outline of the Gulf Coast.

"You killed our Gulf ... our way of life!" reads the message at the top.

MAP: Environmental impacts of the oil spill

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Pitre's family has lived in the bayou for generations. His father and grandfather worked in the fishing and oil industries. Before opening the tattoo parlor, Pitre worked as a welder and pipefitter. But he also spent plenty of time on the water.

"I was born and raised on a trawler boat," he said. "If you were an able body, you went to work on a shrimp boat."

Like many in Southeast Louisiana, Pitre feels bound to the land by generations of family history. Like many of his neighbors, he fears environmental and economic disaster could force him to leave.

If he does, what will he become?

"To be a Cajun you have to do the things a Cajun does," he said. "If you don't, then you are someone else. I guess you will turn into a northerner."

Outside, tattoo parlor employee Derek Matherne, 35, pulls on a cigarette and watches a downpour spawned by Tropical Storm Alex, which later became a hurricane.

"I've been working for nine years with that man and I don't think I've ever seen him more passionate," he said of his boss, who was readying another biting pictorial attack on Hayward. "I've been letting him scream for me."

Matherne is screamed out. In fact, he's looking to leave Southeast Louisiana altogether.

His buddies inside the tattoo shop joke that Matherne has threatened for years to leave the city of about 7,000 people. Matherne insists this time he's serious.

"I'm not going to chance it. I'm tired of running from the hurricanes," he said. "I'm going to get the house fixed up before the property value goes down. I don't know too many people who want to live in an oil-infested swamp."

Matherne has been married for a dozen years and has five children. He's looking for a place that would nurture his artistic desires with less chance of disaster. Like many, the spill has colored his view of the oil industry, on which so many in the region depend.

"It's our livelihood," he said. "But it comes back and bites you."

Both Matherne and Pitre have been giving more thought than ever to the environment.

"I never thought about it much until lately," Pitre said. "It makes you think about the abuse of oil. This opened my eyes."

Pitre said he believes the filigreed network of bayous and waterways can survive the spill, assuming a hurricane doesn't push the oil deep into the wetlands. But as lifelong friends volunteer to deal with oily muck and the chemical dispersants used to break up the massive slick, it's what he doesn't know that worries him.

"You don't know the science of what is happening," he said. "You don't know until 20 years later and you have cancer."

(Posted by Chris Joyner)