Musings of an Artist's Wife

Between 1990 and 1993 artist George Rodrigue painted sixteen portraits on three canvases of Living Legends for Louisiana Public Broadcasting. The 1990 honorees and Rodrigue’s tribute painting launched an LPB tradition continuing today.

All proceeds from posters of the three paintings benefited LPB’s television programming.

“At the gala,” recalls Rodrigue, "each nominee gave a short acceptance speech. Jimmie Davis, age 91, approached the podium slowly and read his prepared words, as we all clapped for our former Governor.”

(pictured: Louisiana Legends 1990, 40x30 inches, oil on canvas by George Rodrigue; back row, Ron Guidry, Ernest J. Gaines, Gene Callahan; front row, Jimmie Davis, Russell Long, Justin Wilson; click photo to enlarge-)

In 1991 LPB honored Rodrigue as well, resulting in a self-portrait. The artist was as famous by this time for his Blue Dog paintings as for his images of Cajun folk life.

(pictured: Louisiana Legends 1991, 40x30 inches, oil on canvas by George Rodrigue; left to right, George Rodrigue, Dr. Michael DeBakey, Al Hirt*, General Robert H. Barrow, Bob Petit; click photo to enlarge-)

And in 1993 Rodrigue’s final LPB painting echoes his first two with his classic oak tree and timeless figures.

(pictured: Louisiana Legends 1993, 40x30 inches, oil on canvas by George Rodrigue; left to right, Judge John Minor Wisdom, James Carville, Rex Reed, Elizabeth Ashley, Pete Fountain*; click photo to enlarge-)

Although honored to paint and participate in the Louisiana Legends, it was the first gala in 1990 that remains poignant for Rodrigue. At the presentation’s end, Master of Ceremonies Gus Weill shared with the crowd,

“We have a real treat for you tonight.”

He opened the curtain, revealing Jimmie Davis (1899-2000) and his band.

“This elderly man who barely made it to the podium earlier,” recalls Rodrigue, “transformed before us, along with his old cronies, into a twenty year old kid.”

Davis began his speech again, as though his first time on stage:

“I recorded this song fifty years ago. Since then it’s been recorded hundreds of times in hundreds of languages, and we’re pleased to play it for ya’ll tonight. If you know the words, chime in.”

There wasn’t a shy voice or dry eye in the room, as the two-term Louisiana Governor performed “You Are My Sunshine.”

According to Rodrigue...

“...the minute the music started, Jimmie Davis danced a jig, and the crowd stood on its feet. It was one of the most memorable things I’ve ever seen. He played two encores.”

“That day,” continues the artist, “I saw an old man become young again; that day I watched Louisiana history play out before me; and that day I truly saw what it means to be a living legend.”

Wendy

*Rodrigue painted Louisiana Legends Pete Fountain and Al Hirt again in 1996 and 2000 for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Story linked here-

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After ten weeks in Houston, George Rodrigue and I returned today to New Orleans for a quick reorganization of our lives. Not only is this homecoming brief, prior to next weekend’s opening events for Blue Dogs in Texas at the Amarillo Museum of Art, it’s bittersweet, as we change our undesired summer’s routine, while leaving behind the people who shared our experience, the people we grew to love.

It’s weird, I said to George a few weeks into our summer, it’s not like we’re in Houston; it’s like we’re on some medical planet.

We saw some of them weekly, some daily. We held in common personal struggles, each unique and similar at the same time, folks from around the world, some fighting for their lives, some saving lives, but all grounded, as we practiced together the rawness and realness of life outside of the expectations and obligations of normality.

“I’m recycling my life,” noted George, mid-summer, as we discussed our situation. “I didn’t expect this new experience, and we should make as much of it as we can; because we’re all living in the moment, whatever that may be.”

For George and me, this was an oddly welcome diversion from society, from fundraisers and dinner parties, from lectures and book signings, from the curiosity and gossip that accompany his fame.

(Note: as if on cue, a tour group, on segways no less, pauses just now, as I write this, below the window of our Faubourg Marigny home; their guide tells of the great Louisiana artist within-)

Still, George gave impromptu art lessons this summer in the most unlikely of places. Too weak to paint, he embraced these discussions, sharing not because he felt obligated, but because he sincerely misses painting, and because his new friends relate less to the celebrity and more to the man.

“Every great artist has taken a common thing and made people see it in a different way,” he explained earlier this week.

There are people, we all know them, who live life on the surface. Maybe pretense is easier; maybe it follows from childhood defenses or a sense of self-preservation. Some seek the cliché and “find themselves,” while others drift happily in a contrived and, perhaps safer, existence.

“The closer you are to who you really are --- is the best thing,” counters George, as we philosophize. “Yet most people can’t get past 5:00 p.m.”

This summer, George Rodrigue and I experienced for the first time in our lives a Reality Planet (as opposed to Reality TV!), a place immersed in raw emotions, genuine concern, unabated fear, and tenacious courage.

I’ve never seen him turn down strawberries and cream, I whispered, distressed, to one new friend. She nodded and smiled, because she knew.

“He’ll like them again,” she said. “I promise.”

....and her empathy, a welcome epidemic on this Reality Planet, comforted me.

Today, I can say with certainty that a healthy and strong George Rodrigue will return soon to his easel. His ordeal began more than twenty years ago, when paint fumes and varnishes poisoned his body, and it culminated this summer with a near collapse of his spine followed by ten weeks of treatment.

“What does that mean?”

...he asked his doctor, who warned him of the flu-like side effects of one medication. The doctor looked at me, confused.

He doesn’t know the flu, I explained. He only knows big stuff, like polio and the plague.

George Rodrigue is stalwart in the face of difficult situations, and from the beginning I believed (because I had to) that, one way or another, he would beat his illness.

“A lot of stuff, good and bad, happens to me; but I don’t let any of it get attached to me. Once I make myself happy, that’s the end of it. I paint a painting; I’m happy; and that’s me.” -G.R.

Both of us, as this summer ends, struggle with the good news far more than the bad. We are trapped within our guilt, and many nights George cries, “Why me?,” as we think of our new friends. We couldn’t bring ourselves to tell them while in Houston of a rare mutation, discovered just last week within his disease, treatable with a simple pill, and guaranteeing his recovery.

Folks talk of grace, karma, luck, fate, what have you – but none of this explains our situation; because George Rodrigue, the oldest in the room, will recover, while these young folks with young families still fight and fight and fight.

We are home for a short time, and we are changed. How exactly remains to be seen. But something happened…..something BIG.

Wendy

-for a related post, see "Lucky Dog"-

-pictured within this post, paintings by George Rodrigue, 2003, detailed at this link; click photos to enlarge-

-for more art and discussion, please join me at Gambit Weekly or on facebook-

“I dropped the Cajun influence, just painting a Blue Dog, and I wondered, What does that mean?” –George Rodrigue

It was the painting Loup-garouof 1991 that altered the Blue Dog concept for George Rodrigue, as he abandoned his oak trees and Cajun figures for the first time since the late 1960s. Although he painted the Blue Dog initially seven years before, the early works incorporated his new subject into Louisiana backgrounds so that the dog appeared as a Cajun person, trapped within the symbols associated with both Rodrigue and his home state.

In Loup-garou he leapt, painting the Blue Dog on its own, six feet tall and abstract (pictured here). The commanding imagery transcends both the Cajun-French myth and the animal known as ‘dog,’ becoming something else, vague yet powerful. Rodrigue recognized immediately that the painting was his, even without his typical oaksand Cajuns.

“The Blue Dog takes me anywhere,” he asserted in 1991 for the first time and in countless interviews since. “I can paint it on the far side of the moon!”

(pictured, Home on the Moon, 1991, oil on canvas, one of the few Blue Dog paintings ever reproduced as a lithograph; click photo to enlarge-)

This leap occurred as much within George’s mind as it did on his canvas.

“You really have to look at yourself and say I wanna do this for me; because if you try to do it for an audience, you’re never going to amount to anything.”

It was in his silkscreens that Rodrigue took his greatest risk, abandoning not only the oak tree, but also brushstroke and blending, in favor of simplicity and clean lines.

In his first attempts, such as Dogs in Space (above, 1990, edition 25, 33x25 inches), he struggled with registrations and damages to such a degree that, rather than pull the prints again, he hand-painted the eyes with yellow pigment. (For more on this see the post, “Land-locked Pirogues and Blue Dog’s Eyes.”)

Later, he not only painted the dog with planets and in space, he envisioned it in space, as a work of art, traveling beyond Earth’s atmosphere, a project realized when the crew of Space Shuttle Endeavour carried his artwork Life’s a Blast onto their last mission, the painting altered in size and materials so that it safely adhered to the inner wall of the shuttle.

(pictured, Life’s a Blast, a painting originally conceived by Rodrigue as part of the Xerox Collection in 2000, on view through October 14, 2012 at the Amarillo Museum of Art; click photo to enlarge-)

Upon their return, the Endeavour astronauts presented the collage above to President George W. Bush.

“Celebrating the much-acclaimed works of Cajun artist George Rodrigue, this Blue Dog space theme artwork was flown aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour to the International Space Station during mission STS-126. November 14-30, 2008, traveling 6.6 million miles in 251 orbits of the Earth.”

(pictured, Space Chair, 1992, an original silkscreen by George Rodrigue, edition 90, 34x24 inches)

Despite his space and spatial exploration, Rodrigue never truly abandoned the oak tree or the Cajuns. Following his initial burst of freedom, he incorporated his Evangelines and Jolie Blondes into his Blue Dog works. For Rodrigue, despite humorous titles and outward perceptions, this was serious, as he approached on his canvas concepts of shape, design and color.

(pictured, Does Mars Have Oak Trees? 1993, acrylic on canvas by George Rodrigue, 10-ft across; click photo to enlarge-)

This notion of space extends beyond Rodrigue’s canvas and into reality, including his physical space, transporting him from a small Lafayette gallery in 1989 to New Orleans’ famous Royal Street and hundreds of visitors a day. (related post here-)

It’s no wonder that this summer, while trapped for weeks within a small Houston, Texas hotel room with nothing but his imagination and his computer, the universe and outer space lured him again.

“I’ve got an idea,” he explained, “to place the dog between the moon and Earth, but on chrome --- and huge!”

(pictured, Two Different Worlds, one of several artworks in progress, 8ft across, silkscreen ink and hi-gloss varnish on chrome)

He worked at his computer, vacillating between simple and complex, transposing his world from a narrow reality to endless possibilities, from his brain to his screen and, this month, from his screen to a chrome surface and the gallery wall.

Researching his inspiration, I asked George Rodrigue about this fascination with space. He recalled his childhood, midnights on the roof of his New Iberia home, staring at the stars through his first purchase, a telescope, paid for from sales to high school classmates of hand-painted monsters on t-shirts.

But more, he discussed the concept of art itself and the personal focus that grounds him in reality even as he soars within his mind.

Wendy

-above, a 2012 video clip from PBS’s "Made in New Orleans"

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Every once in a while a new silkscreen provokes a collective gasp--- from our staff, from collectors, even from George Rodrigue himself, as though surprised by his own artwork. It first happened in 1991 with Starry, Starry Eyes, then in 1995 with Party Animal (a Mardi Gras tribute), and again in 2002 with over-sized motorcycle images called The Rat Pack, all original prints (not based on paintings) that caused a telephone-frenzy and sold out within weeks of release.

This month we see it happening once more, with the stunning new silkscreen, Cow Dogs.

(2012, 28x38 inches, pink and yellow editions of 150; unfortunately the heavy color saturation and paper lack intensity on the computer; visit Rodrigue Studio, while supplies last, to see in person; click photo to enlarge-)

Rodrigue’s love of color, strong symmetrical design and iconography combine in an effective, even perfect, result. I asked him about the symbolism, recalling Picasso’s Bulls and O’Keeffe’s Skulls.

“It seems like every artist throughout time interprets the heads or skulls of horses and cows. The early cave drawings at Lascaux were renderings of some kind of four-legged animals with horns. It’s a traditional fascination within art, inspiring creative interpretations, connecting man with animal.

“In the end, each artist puts his own indelible mark on basically the same subject matter.”

“In this case I adapted a South American folk art beaded skull interpretation into my own design, connecting the cow’s skull not only to the American West, but also to Mesoamerican cultures and, through the Blue Dog and its loup-garou origins, the Cajuns.”

It was in 1993 that Rodrigue first incorporated these skulls into his designs, creating Moo-Cow Bluesand Pueblo Puppies (click titles for images and related posts). Like Cow Dogs, these artworks are symmetrically strong. Yet they are prior to advancements in silkscreen colors and complexity, changes related to not only Rodrigue’s artistic growth within this medium, but also the progress of technology.

Although not his primary intention in this artwork, Rodrigue’s Cow Dogs suggest his lifelong fondness for Texas and the American West. Coincidentally, Blue Dogs in Texas opened recently at the Amarillo Museum of Art (through October 14, 2012).

The exhibition features more than 100 paintings by George Rodrigue, such as the classic artworks pictured below: The Immaculate Dog, Kiss Me, I’m Cajun, Paint Me Back Into Your Life, Wendy and Me, and a painted fiberglass cow, one of three within the exhibition, including the original version from the Chicago Cow Parade, painted by Rodrigue for Neiman Marcus, Michigan Avenue, in 1999 (detailed here; click title-links above for more on these paintings).

In a recent interview for Amarillo Magazine, Rodrigue describes the exhibition and his use of Texas iconography, such as the cow:

“Most of my museum exhibitions are retrospectives, because I want the audience to see how I painted forty years ago and how my artwork has progressed to the present.

“I think folks will be surprised at my ‘Louisiana Cowboys.’ It’s a subject I’ve approached many times over the years, and we’ve included a large selection of these paintings in this exhibition. I hope people like them as much as I’ve enjoyed returning to this strong American theme in both my Cajun and Blue Dog paintings.

“I created some special works for this show where it’s obvious that the Blue Dog resides in Texas. I try to do something that relates to some part of the culture or country in every exhibit, because the Blue Dog represents life today, and I can incorporate it in any situation I can imagine. It’s blended well into Texas for a long time, probably second only to Louisiana.”

Although aware of the Amarillo exhibition, Rodrigue began his work on Cow Dogs long before Blue Dogs in Texas, playing for nearly a year with the design. The timing is coincidental, and this particular print (unlike the recent Big Texan Sky) is less a Texas tribute than an art historical reference.

As I write this, I stare at Cow Dogs propped within our living room, where it seems at home with Hunt Slonem’s Carmen Mirandas and Robert Indiana’s Numbers, all strong, repetitive, classic imagery.

Wendy

-click photos to enlarge-

-with sincere thanks to the Amarillo Museum of Art and to Marney Robinson, Education Director of the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts, who curated and coordinated Blue Dogs in Texas; I’m sure Marney agrees that this exhibition would not have been possible without her able assistants, Omar, Jessica, Douglas, Chris, Byron and Eldridge, who transported and installed artwork, working with enthusiasm ‘round the clock-

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George Rodrigue and I returned to New Orleans early August as though our old lives were a dream.

It’s hard to believe we threw parties in this house, I mused, as we settled into our sofa and BBC television.

“I barely remember going out to dinner,” countered George.

Meanwhile, artist Glenda Banta asked me on-line about our home, about sharing snippets of collections and décor (Ha!) within my blog and on facebook. I dreamed, or rather nightmared, as I thought about it, recalling New Orleans designer Nadine Blakein our Creole townhouse last May for a friend's birthday party the night before we left for three days, which became three months, in Houston.

With southern grace she complimented our living room, yet I recall with horror her talented eye scanning our eclectic mess. I also remember that night as the last time I wore a dress, heels, or make-up, the last time I small-talked, the last time I sipped champagne.

(pictured, The Roaring Twenties in our previous life)

George and I have no use for decorators, and I mean that without offense to their profession, but nevertheless literally. If we hired one, it would become full-time work, sort of like our contractor on the payroll for twenty years, currently repairing our roof and garage. The decorator could live in the guestroom, I suppose, on call for shifts between museum exhibitions, as artwork disappears and materializes, sometimes one piece, but more often ten or twenty, on loan for a month, maybe a year, leaving us, as was the case upon our return a few weeks ago, with blank walls and empty nails.

To compound matters, we dissembled my office adjacent to our bedroom, creating a temporary studio for George, who sits at his easel for the first time since February after months of back and shoulder pain. This return is in his own time, now every day, some for thirty minutes, some for hours, as he heals slowly, at last nourishing his psyche as well as his body.

(pictured, for three weeks George has worked on this painting of a barn, surrounded in my office by my mother’s paintings of angels and planets; click photo to enlarge-)

A decorator in our home faces not only the hodge-podge of our legacy, my parents' Asian and European furniture, everything from Thailand to Bavaria, and George’s New Iberia treasures, including his boyhood rocker and his father’s brick-laying tools, but also our disconnected taste in art, everything from 17^th century South America to 20^thcentury New York, from the novice potter at the craft fair to Warhol’s John Wayne.

Mix in Rodrigue, his student works, his Oaks and Cajuns, his Nudes, his Photography, his Sculpture, and, commanding it all with its presence, his Blue Dog, and you realize our self-induced and, admittedly, enviable challenge.

Although I took photos, I post in this blog, after much reflection, only a few. Tempted to share more, I'm guarded in this privacy, despite the personal vignettes within my writing. Several years ago, we ceased opening our home to fundraisers and strangers. Even with photographs, to do so now feels exposed to the point of no return, like, your consolation, admitting to the Shaun Cassidy poster taped for years to the back of my bedroom door.

(pictured: Before hanging in our living room, Rodrigue’s Shu-fly, 1999, decorated a window at Bergdorf Goodman, NYC; also pictured, 17^th century crucifixion with human hair, Peru; puppet of Georgia O’Keeffe by Armand Lara, 2005; 18^th century horse, a child’s toy from Peru; portrait by Fritz Scholder, 1997; click photo to enlarge-)

It so happens that today we hang a new piece of artwork, a 7-foot painting by Mallory Page, an abstract from her series “Tree House” (pictured below, on left), eventually headed to George’s studio in Carmel, but today filling the spot in New Orleans left by his Indians, Cajuns and Cowboys, currently on loan to the Amarillo Museum of Art.

The purchase was not without adventure. We planned to buy a Page last spring, but George’s health distracted us. Still on his mind, he sent me to her gallery immediately upon our New Orleans return, choosing a painting before the frenzy of White Linen Night.

For the first time since May, I donned a dress and heels. I tried eye make-up but felt clownish, settling for a lip pencil and a bit of gloss. Wearing a Jergens tan and dull-rooted hair, its only attribute that it now reaches mid-back, I drove, also for the first time since May, venturing towards the Arts District and a life that seems like it now belongs to someone else.

-click photo to enlarge-

Self-conscious in my world and attune to the vulnerability in her abstracts, I chose quickly and easily at Page’s gallery, rushing back the two blocks to my car. In the street, my 2007 Louboutin wedges caught a NOLA pothole, and as my ankle twisted, my flouncy dress flew to my waist. I sat on the hot asphalt shedding hot tears until a man, a male Jerusha Bailey,* offered me a hand.

“You shore have nice legs," he said.

I watched him walk on, whispered thank you too late, and absorbed the first compliment I’d heard in months.

And I wondered without worrying if, like George’s mother, we now live, for better or worse, a bit lost in the past.

Wendy

*Jerusha Bailey is a chain-smoking, offensive, sometimes redeemable, sometimes homeless New Orleans character in Patty Friedmann's Secondhand Smoke (2002), available at your favorite independent bookstore-

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George Rodrigue, known worldwide for his Blue Dog canvases, began painting in 1968 not bright-colored dogs but near-black trees. His devotion to the Louisiana landscape remains an anchor within his art throughout forty-five years of Cajuns, Portraits and Blue Dogs, most of which include the now recognized Rodrigue Oak.

His landscapes today, although rooted in those early dark canvases, reveal a mature artist, confident in his craft. Some include the familiar deep greens and browns; however none are so dark as his earliest works. And some paintings essentially interchange his subjects, so that the strong design and color of a tree might as well be that of a dog. Such is the case with Rodrigue’s Acrylic Landscapes.

(pictured, Untitled, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 24x48 inches; click photo to enlarge-)

I’ve written often, especially this summer, about Rodrigue’s lifesaving, yet challenging shift from oil to acrylic paint, a change he made permanent in the early 1990s. The Blue Dog works well in the fast-drying intense acrylic colors. However, Rodrigue’s Landscapes pose a greater challenge without the ability to blend the pigment in his established painterly style.

(pictured, Landscape, 1970, oil on canvas, 8x5 feet; view a series of typical Rodrigue landscapes from 1968 to present at this link)

His use of acrylic paint forced Rodrigue in new directions within his art. Even though the latest water-based oil paints allow him today a revisit of his early style, such as in the recent painting below, his years with acrylic paint and the hundreds of canvases since his first oak trees result in paintings affected by the knowledge and confidence of his age and experience, as well as a palette now firmly devoted to color.

(pictured, Low Tide, 2009, water-based oil on canvas, 15x30 inches)

In his landscapes, no matter what the year, Rodrigue adheres to the basic rules he established for himself in the late 1960s. Rejecting the spacious sky of traditional European-style paintings, he pushes a large oak to the front of his canvas, cropping the top of the tree so that the light shines in the distance and from beneath the branches. With its hard edge and strong shape, his oak stands like a symbol of both his state and culture.

In addition, he rejects specific locales, painting the Louisiana in his head as opposed to the one outside. In this way his paintings, no matter what the year or series, express a sense of mystery regarding time, place and, above all, meaning.

His challenge lies in working within these self-imposed parameters while developing his style. This is most obvious within the Acrylic Landscapes, where the basic rules apply, yet the paintings communicate a contemporary statement akin to Rodrigue’s Blue Dog canvases. He achieves this not only through his use of color, but also by adopting a sketch-like treatment using heavy, unblended pigment and large, loose brushstrokes.

(pictured, Acrylic Landscapes, 2009, various sizes)

Because George is successful, it’s difficult sometimes for the rest of us to understand that he still experiments and grows within his art. He returns to his Oak Tree repeatedly; however, like his long journey with the Blue Dog, his approach remains bound by his own evolution and interests.

“If it doesn’t make me happy, then I don’t paint it,” he says often.

It is this mindset that allows him to break with a certain style of painting without fearing the public’s reaction.

“The people who collect my early oaks won’t like these,” he noted…

…as he painted his first few Acrylic Landscapes, now a series of forty paintings, some with the Blue Dog and some without.

(pictured, Untitled, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 18x24 inches)

Yet George Rodrigue’s comment was not a lament or regret, but merely an observation, as he continues exploring with freedom, both within his mind and on his canvas.

Wendy

-See Rodrigue’s Landscapes, both acrylic and oil, anytime at his galleries in New Orleans and Carmel; for information on availability and pricing email info@georgerodrigue.com

-For more art and discussion, please join me at Gambit Weekly or on facebook-

Recently artist David Harouni painted a portrait of George Rodrigue, a special request by mutual friends Kerry and Tiffa Boutte of New Orleans. Known for his powerful painted Heads, usually his own, Harouni traces his life’s journey, the imprints of memory and experience, layering and scraping paint in a process both concealing and revealing.

Born in Iran and raised in Iran and Israel, Harouni belies the label “New Orleans artist.” By his own admission he is a nomad, inspired within this city yet, like Rodrigue, called to paint works that, although rooted in reality, focus heavily on imagination and symbolism. Both Harouni and Rodrigue embrace the idea as gospel.

“Through my brush,” explains Harouni, “I paint the emotions, the challenges, the adventures, the failures, the successes, the weaknesses, the fears, the pride and the enormous strength of a wanderer, an exile.”

-click photos to enlarge-

For me, after seeing George struggle with his health and spirit this summer, this painting represents his returning strength, as though Harouni scrapes away the broken body, revealing the warrior within. George himself describes his recent experience as a “renaissance,” as life gives him a second chance, an eerily familiar feeling as he recalls his many months of seclusion while sick as a child with polio and again in the late 1980s with chemical hepatitis.

Although a portrait of Rodrigue, the painting is pure Harouni, the palimpsest* of his life and technique used to interpret another’s. He paints the Blue Dog artist with deep, determined eyes, revealing his conviction and lack of fear in both his art and life.

“My subjects are all in solitude,” says Harouni. “They are not laughing, crying, sad or happy. They just are.”

Harouni also paints Rodrigue like the great and powerful Oz, looking towards the future with an all-knowing, confident direction despite the isolation of his path. In both Harouni’s painting and in reality, Rodrigue grows from a simple oak tree and makes it his own, expressing it in a way unlike any artist before him.

(pictured, Untitled Acrylic Landscape by George Rodrigue, 2009, 36x48 inches; more info here)

We hung Harouni’s Rodrigue in our Faubourg Marigny home this week, where it complements the Rodrigue Dogs, Indiana Numbers, and Slonem Butterflies in multiples throughout the room. Since his earliest oak trees, Rodrigue gravitates towards strong, repeated imagery within both his art and collection. This includes a number of Harouni heads, some giant kings, some small sculptures, featured prominently within our New Orleans house and George’s Carmel Studio.

(pictured, a grouping on our mantle, including a painted cast ‘box’ by Harouni; bronze and glass Heads by Harouni; Rodrigue’s Acadian Barnyard1969; carved saints, 18^th century; click photo to enlarge-)

Harouni’s golds and reds remind me of Rembrandt, particularly his late self-portraits of the 1660s. Like Harouni and Rodrigue, Rembrandt was self-made, selling his work without agents and often without a commission or guaranteed sale. He also experimented with other mediums, such as printmaking. He embraced the self-portrait throughout his life, seducing the viewer with his eyes.

(pictured, Self-portrait, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1661; click photo to enlarge)

With Rembrandt’s years came layers of understanding, and his timeless gaze challenges today as much as it did 350 years ago. His paintings pose questions forever, even beyond the intent that prompted nearly 100 self-portraits.

Perhaps the same can be said of Harouni (above), who writes,

“The successful immigrant is one who makes a decision, takes a strong step towards a goal, and makes what seemed unreachable a reality. He does not mourn what he left behind; he does not occupy himself with what has passed.

"He has faith in his strength and ability to overcome all obstacles in his path or at least has the courage to face them. He achieves fortitude through perseverance that renders daily obstacles meaningless to him.”

Rodrigue too, although native to America, can be described in this way, descended from an Acadian Saga, yet true to his ideas and focused, without hesitation, on his own direction in life and art.

(pictured, I Am an Artist, 2006, acrylic on linen by George Rodrigue)

Wendy

*palimpsest, defined by Harouni: “…to draw and erase over and over again, having diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface-"

-visit Harouni in his gallery at 933 Royal Street in the New Orleans French Quarter; on his website; or call (504)299-4393-

-a sincere thanks to Kerry and Tiffa Boutte of Mulate’s the Original Cajun Restaurant-

-pictured above: David Harouni, Tiffa Boutte, George Rodrigue, and an original Harouni canvas, photographed by Daniel Erath of the Times-Picayune, March 28, 2012, at an evening benefiting the New Orleans Ballet Association-

-for more art and discussion, please join me on facebook or at Gambit Weekly-

“When they showed me my body, it was blue,” explained George Rodrigue to a friend this week. “Nothing dark, no patches, they were all gone.”

I overheard him on the phone and my ears picked up, not because I hadn’t seen the scan, but because I hadn’t thought of his body as blue, and I rather liked this image of the Blue Dog Man. Coincidentally, at that moment I turned the last pages of Christopher Moore’s Sacré Bleu,* a modern-day fairytale devoted to the color of western royalty and religion, tracing its source in paintings like Van Gogh’s Starry Night to a muse, a blue nude, who, with the help of The Colorman, sheds the irresistible hue from her body, bewitching artists with the precious color.

-click photo to enlarge-

(pictured, Three Dog Night, 1993, 36x48, oil and acrylic on canvas by George Rodrigue; more on the Red Dog here-)

Although today his undisputed favorite color, George Rodrigue barely touched the color blue in his early paintings, dark Louisiana landscapes and near black-and-white scenes of Cajun folk-life. By the early 1980s blue appeared occasionally in the eyes or ribbons of Jolie Blonde. And it was his 1984 painting of the loup-garou, a ghost dog set beneath a dark night sky, that eased the color, first as a blue-grey and then growing with intensity, into nearly every painting since.

“You cannot get a grip on blue.” -Moore*

(pictured, Blue Fall in Louisiana, 2006, acrylic on canvas by George Rodrigue, 24x30 inches; click photo to enlarge-)

The intense blue of the Virgin Mary’s gown in early artworks such as the Limbourg Brother’s Belles Heures (1405, related story here-) originates with lapis lazuli, mined in the mountains of Afghanistan. Difficult to obtain, its rarity intoxicated both artists and patrons for centuries, oftentimes the painting’s expense related directly to its blue requirements:

“The two Michelangelo (1475-1564) paintings…hang in the National Gallery in London to this day, but it’s likely that they remain unfinished because the painter was unable to obtain the ultramarine he needed and moved on to other commissions, or the patron refused to pay the high price of the color.” –Moore, Afterword*

Even today, blue, although no more expensive than other colors, remains precious and linked to the intangible.

(There is a painting I found among my mother’s things that I’d never seen before. It’s only two hands, painted in blue. It hangs in my closet, and sometimes I place my hands on hers and I think she’s there. From the post “Mignon’s Flowers,” linked here-)

Curious, I counted the tubes of blue within George Rodrigue’s paint drawers and discovered ten different manufactured shades with titles like cerulean, cobalt and ultramarine. We spoke about the color and, although intrigued by its lofty history, the appeal for him lies in the richness of the hue, as opposed to the richness (as in rarity and price tag) of perception.

“There is a spiritual quality to blue, however,” he continues. “The dark night sky affects my mood and my paintings, replacing the earthy greens and browns of my early works. As I grow older, my mind expands. I suspend reality on my canvas with greater confidence, exploring not just the trees and grass, but also the mysterious and the mystical.”

(pictured, an unfinished canvas on Rodrigue’s easel this week; click photo to enlarge-)

In my early twenties, while traveling alone, I fell to unconsciousness during a hike in the Austrian mountains. I awoke in the snow on a steep incline, wedged against a tree. On that black-blue night, I thought about my tiny place on this mountain, on this earth, and in this universe. As my mind expanded into existentialism, I grew smaller and less important, losing all fear and not really caring whether or not I survived the night.

A brush with death spurs unlikely consequences. This mountain experience, I have often thought, gave me the courage to take every leap since, a lesson George Rodrigue experienced and survived three times, first leading him to paint, then to the Blue Dog, and now to some wondrous unknown.

“This is one of the more unique pieces I’ve ever done…”

…explained George to his doctor, a philosopher as much as scientist, who near-cried along with us, as we discussed George’s astonishing test results. Originally from Vietnam, the doctor shared his thoughts on karma and kindness, as they studied George’s artwork Together Again(above, from Bodies), a blue nude completed in 2005.

“I turned the figure blue and overlaid it with the Blue Dog, creating something else altogether.”

During this blue and beautiful fall, I’m sentimental and hopeful and I turn, as I have for years, to Aretha Sings the Blues and “This Bitter Earth” from 1964.

Wendy

*Sacré Bleu, 2012 by Christopher Moore, William Morrow Publishing; a perfect and much-appreciated gift from Kathrerine Marquette, San Antonio, of the McKnay Museum, the first modern art museum in the state of Texas, and my favorite haunt while a student at Trinity University-

-For related posts, see “Blue Wendy” and "Modeling for George Rodrigue"

-Please join me October 10, 2012 in Destin, Florida, for a luncheon and lecture: “Musings of an Artist’s Wife,” benefitting the Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation and the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts; details here-

-for more art and discussion, join me on facebook or at Gambit Weekly-

During his forty-five year career, George Rodrigue has painted more than one hundred portraits, everything from his family to U.S. Presidents. One series in particular, however, stands out as a select group of award-winning authors and scholars, painted for the Flora Levy Lecture Series at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette during the 1980s.

From October 1st to November 30th, 2012, nine of these portraits, including Walker Percy, Shirley Ann Grau and John Kennedy Toole, accompany a contemporary counterpart, a talent and image so strong that it holds its own among these literary giants. The State Library of Louisiana boldly unveils for the first time George Rodrigue’s 6-foot portrait (2011) of his friend: actor, writer, director and artist Sylvester Stallone.

-click photo to enlarge-

"I’m excited that after thirty years this collection of distinguished writers is on view. Since then I’ve painted numerous portraits but never a dedicated series such as this one, completed over the course of a decade. It was in 1984, in the middle of this series, that I painted the first Blue Dog.

"Sylvester Stallone’s portrait represents to me pop culture today. Stallone invented Rocky; Toole invented Ignatius J. Reilly;* and I invented the Blue Dog. All three are icons, ingrained in the fabric of our cultural history, one on the screen, one on the page, and one on the canvas.

"The early portraits represent classic literature, developing into pop culture through phenomena like The Moviegoer, All the King’s Men, and A Confederacy of Dunces. Stallone’s contribution is a continuation of this tradition, combining a strong, iconic character with the medium of film.” -George Rodrigue

(pictured above, a selection of portraits from the Flora Levy Lecture Series; see the complete collection with histories at this link-)

Coinciding with this exhibition is the Louisiana Book Festival, now in its ninth year, free and open to the public with author lectures, book signings and workshops this October at the Louisiana State Capitol, the State Library of Louisiana, and surrounding grounds and buildings.

George and I look forward to this festival annually and participate this year with an afternoon of special events, most notably a personal tour with George Rodrigue of his portrait exhibition:

Saturday, October 27^th, 2012

12:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m.
State Library of Louisiana

Rodrigue Portrait Exhibition: Walker Percy, Sylvester Stallone and the Blue Dog

“Exhibit Chat with George Rodrigue”

2:15 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

State Library, Seminar Center

“Painting the Blue Dog: A Program for All Ages” featuring George and Wendy Rodrigue and the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts

3:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Barnes & Noble Tent

Book Signing with George Rodrigue**

4:15 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.

State Library, Capitol View Room

Presentation by Wendy Rodrigue

“The Art of Blogging, including Blue Dogs and Cajuns: Musings of an Artist’s Wife”

We hope to see you on October 27^th for this special series of events, Rodrigue’s only scheduled public appearances this fall. I also encourage you to visit the Louisiana Book Festival website and explore its featured authors and programming. Some of our favorite participants include novelist Rick Bragg, cookbook author Marcelle Bienvenuand artist Lin Emery, noted for her kinetic sculpture installed within the reflective pool at the entrance to the New Orleans Museum of Art.

In addition, you’ll find both George and me in the audience (1:30 p.m., House Committee Room 3) when Ken Wells, author of the outstanding Meely LaBauve Series, joins Houma, Louisiana native Chris Cenac, Sr., M.D., F.A.C.S. for a discussion of Cenac’s lavish and well-researched illustrated history of Houma-Terrebonne, Eyes of an Eagle: Jean-Pierre Cenac, Patriarch.

(Note: I was so surprised and impressed by Eyes of an Eagle that I contributed a related article for Gambit Weekly, "Dancing the Shrimp," linked here-)

Finally, during this 200^th year of Louisiana's Statehood, I was honored to contribute a handful of essays to the momentous tome A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana. The 450 pages and color plates include 275 artists and essays, compiled and edited by Michael Sartisky, PhD and John R. Kemp of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, and J. Richard Gruber, PhD, Director Emeritus of The Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

(pictured, Rodrigue’s Aioli Dinner, his best-known Cajun painting, appears within A Unique Slant of Light. The original hangs on public view at The Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Read the story behind this important painting here-)

At 3:15 p.m. you’ll find me running between Rodrigue’s book signing (Barnes & Noble tent) and Sartisky/Gruber’s discussion (House Committee Room 6) of the history of Louisiana art. Although the 2012 volume does not include the pop culture portrait of Sylvester Stallone, it does include Rodrigue’s Governor Earl K. Long and his Aioli Dinner(1971, above), a collection of portraits representing the rich cultural history of our state.

See you in Baton Rouge on October 27^th ...

...and don’t forget: Rocky, Percy and more on view at the State Library of Louisiana through November 30^th 2012.

Wendy

*for an Ignatius J. Reilly-inspired post from Musings of an Artist’s Wife, see “Lucky Dog,” linked here-

**Rodrigue will sign only books at this event; he regrets that he is unable to sign prints, posters, note cards or other items; books available while supplies last (we ran out last year, so you might want to stop by the B&N tent early, saving your books for the 3:15 signing)-

-for more art and discussion, please join me on facebook or at Gambit Weekly-

In 1978 George Rodrigue tackled a 5x7 foot canvas, piecing together a group of women at a church quilting party, a common Acadian gathering during the 1940s and 1950s. The ambitious project includes twenty figures, including a portrait of the painting’s new owner with her child, all gathered beneath Rodrigue’s typical Louisiana oaks.

-click photo to enlarge-

As with his other Cajun paintings, such as the Aioli Dinner and Mamou Riding Academy, the concept originates with a photograph or series of photographs (now lost), adjusted to suit his needs. In the original image the figures sit indoors, perhaps within a fellowship hall or other meeting space, working on the quilts sold to benefit their church.

Rodrigue moves the women outside, contriving a setting so that the scene gains generalities of place and time, becoming anyone’s quilting party rather than a specific one.

The figures’ heads never the touch the sky, framed instead within oaks, bushes and quilts. The children sit locked within the outline of adult women. The landscape nurtures the traditions; the oaks stabilize the people; and the mothers protect the future.

Reinforcing this concept is Rodrigue’s choice of clothing, dressing most of the women in traditional frocks, while the back row stands in modern-day attire. The painting rejects time, the figures floating and glowing like ghosts. Without feet they melt into the landscape and each other as a unit, locked within both an artist’s design and a Cajun tradition.

“I first got the idea for a quilting painting,” explains Rodrigue, “when I saw quilts on the road between Alexandria and Monroe, Louisiana, as I visited clients in the 1970s. On the small two-lane highway on the east side of the Red River, local quilters hung their quilts for sale on clothes lines strung between the oak trees in front of their homes.”

Quilting parties continue today not just in Louisiana but widely, as we’ve learned through gifts over the years, including a treasured compilation of Rodrigue images formed into a quilt by a group in South Carolina at the request of George’s friend, Linda Kuykendall, who donated her collection of t-shirts for the project.

-click photo to enlarge-

Pictured: Although Rodrigue does not make Blue Dog t-shirts for sale, his friends and family enjoy his frequent tributes, such as…

…the Blue Dog Café, featuring a stylized version of the dog as the restaurant’s logo; “King’s Kreaux,” a bit of carnival fun referencing Rodrigue’s 1994 reign as King of the Krewe of Louisianians in Washington D.C.; “To Stay Alive We Need Levee 5,” the artist’s political plea in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina; “Café Tee George,” showing Rodrigue as a young boy, the logo of his Lafayette restaurant that burned in 1997; and Jolie Blonde, his 1974 classic painting advertising his 1988 Los Angeles exhibition….a show now famous not only because it was a sell-out exhibition, but also because it featured for the first time publicly Rodrigue's Blue Dog-

Pictured: The quilt’s (and shirts’) reverse highlights Rodrigue’s famous red signature, as well as sayings like “Sometimes I Feel Like a Blue Dog.”

Recently, as George struggled with his illness this summer, The Community Prayer Quilters of Estes Park, Colorado quilted a gift to aid his healing through the traditional comfort of a quilt and power of prayer.

“My cousin Kay tells me,” explains George’s Lafayette friend Bertha Bernard, “that as they work on the quilt, they pray for the person for whom it’s intended. When they finish, they hang the quilt in a church where the congregation prays individually for that person. Kay is a member of the group, and they are called to make hundreds of quilts each year.”

Pictured: October 2012, A now healthy George Rodrigue holds the prayer quilt created and sent to him this summer by The Community Prayer Quilters of Estes Park, Colorado.

Early in our marriage, George and I collected several quilts during drives through the Texas Panhandle, specifically the stretch between Amarillo and Wichita Falls. We stopped at the small towns and purchased heirlooms from area antique marts, seeking tradition in our young marriage through these found handmade treasures. Although we ceased collecting long ago, the quilts remain, whether on beds, within trunks, or framed on the wall, destined within our family as a continuation of a cultural tradition, The Patchwork Gift.

Wendy

-George Rodrigue and I hope to see you at the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge, October 27th, 2012; details here-

-see "Walker Percy, Sylvester Stallone and the Blue Dog" at The State Library of Louisiana through November 30, 2012; details here-

-for more art and discussion, please join me on facebook-

In 1952 in New Iberia, Louisiana, George Rodrigue (b. 1944) remained sick in bed for six months.

I explained this week to a group of young students on the Florida Panhandle that he suffered from polio, a contagious disease affecting his ability to walk. He couldn’t attend school or play outside. Imagine poor little George without a television (audience gasp)….or a computer….(bigger audience gasp)…..

“…or video games!” called a child from the back…

“…or electricity!” offered a wide-eyed girl on the front row.

I shared with the kids the famous story, how George’s mother brought him paint-by-number, which he turned over, using the colors and brushes to paint not the diagrammed Last Supper, but rather alligators and cowboys. He formed tiny animals from modeling clay, arranging them on his nightstand for company. And he decided right then, at age eight and having never seen an original painting by anyone other than himself, that he would be an artist.

(pictured, Bozo the Clown, oil on board by George Rodrigue, 1957)

“When I was in grammar school and high school,” recalls George, “we had no art instruction at all. At that time I didn’t realize that my drawing in class was a direct result of that absence. That’s why I always sat in the back row. I could draw what and when I wanted and was less likely to get caught by Coach Blanco, who threw me out of class many times for drawing.”

(pictured, sharing Rodrigue’s Four for Mardi Gras this week with students at Edwins Elementary School, Destin, Florida; click photo to enlarge-)

In addition to four school visits, this week’s outreach program, a partnership between the Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation (MKAF) and the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts (GRFA), included an adult presentation at the annual MKAF Arts Guild Luncheon.

Encouraged to share personal stories, I admitted the intimacy and honor that accompany modeling for George. I shared during the lecture only the tamest images from Bodies while introducing my father, one of the few men in attendance, to the hometown crowd. It’s an education week, after all, and I’m sure I learned more from the creative kids during school visits than the adults learned from me during my exposé.

-be sure and click these to enlarge-

My sister Heather Parker and friend Marney Robinson helped coordinate the week’s events with Marcia Hull of the Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation:

“It was so fun seeing childhood friends and their kids on school visits!” says Heather, who designs and manages our gallery website. “I loved sharing our beautiful beaches with our ‘melanin-challenged’ friend Marney! Last night I dreamt of white sand, green water, happy children and a raspberry filled donut.”

Marney Robinson (pictured below) is originally from Hobbs, New Mexico, and this was her first visit to the beach. She dresses with unpredictable panache. “This is Bridgette, the sexy librarian,” she clarified, describing her luncheon attire, complete with the antique bee pin on her shoulder. She also enjoys a long-standing love of the arts, children, and donuts, sending us twice in three days to the famous Donut Hole, Destin.

"I couldn't imagine a better first visit to the beautiful Emerald Coast!" says Marney. "I was able to spend time with friends, meet new ones and once again see the excitement of students and adults for learning about George Rodrigue. I loved that all of the children growing up on those amazing beaches could relate so well to a Cajun boy from the swamp.

"I will never forget my first dip in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico (while fully dressed; thanks Heather!) or those first steps in the white sand with two wonderful ladies. The donuts were pretty great too!"

Miss Marney, as the kids call her, is Director of Education for the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts. She organizes school visits, summer art camps, lesson plans, museum exhibitions and more. George and I visited Marney and her family in the small desert town of Hobbs a few years ago after exploring Marfa, Texas, resulting in an artsy adventure with photos, linked here.

But it was the strangers (and I use that word very lightly), those folks from my public facebook page, an unguarded leap I took just one year ago, who surprised me the most. Several drove in from Pensacola, New Orleans, and other Gulf South cities for the Arts Guild Lecture. In most cases we met for the first time in person after sharing on-line for months, brought together, oddly enough, in my hometown.

(pictured: George Rodrigue created the silkscreen Okaloosa Island in 2011 as a tribute to my hometown of Fort Walton Beach, Florida; details here-)

Although facebook, especially a public page, makes a person vulnerable, it can’t be worse than explaining giant nudes of oneself. Like modeling for an artist, the rewards of facebook, blogging, and lectures are worth it, because in taking risks, we might find (or give!) something wonderful and/or exactly what we need, no matter how elusive and unexpected.

I share openly that in many ways it was these very folks, these facebook strangers, who preserved my sanity during a difficult summer. We exchanged thoughts on George’s art and my blogs, a bit of normalcy for a few moments each day while I escaped the panic and responsibility accompanying his illness. To my readers and facebook friends, especially those of you who attended this week and those of you I’ve yet to meet, thank you.

(pictured: Even though we’d never met, I spied Darbi Fraser at Destin Elementary School right away, because she has her father’s eyes, my fellow 1985 graduate from Fort Walton Beach High School)

Finally, since we’re going home in this post, I leave you, for Marney, who grew up fifteen years behind me, an ‘80s classic, a sing-a-long on my high school runs between Fort Walton Beach and my second home of New Orleans, a song George Rodrigue heard, to my astonishment, for the first time this week and, to my even greater astonishment (as I learned on our drive home from our Florida Education Week), a staple in Marney Robinson’s car today-

Wendy

-Meet George Rodrigue during his only public appearance this fall, an exhibition and series of events surrounding the Louisiana Book Festival, October 27, 2012; story and details here-

-And a big thank you to the Metropolitan Opera, which left me swooning this week with a comment on my story "Moonstruck, Madame Butterfly and the Mudlark"-

After six months away from his easel, George Rodrigue returns this fall to his instincts, painting throughout the quiet nights in solitude. The canvases, dominated by a Blue Dog and oftentimes a typical Rodrigue oak, are familiar, yet something is different in the feeling behind the images. To the point, something is different in his affect.

(pictured, George Rodrigue, October 2012; click photos throughout to enlarge-)

“People asked me all summer,” explains George, “‘What will you paint once you’re back at your easel?’ I said I didn’t know, but that it probably would relate to my illness. Looking at these first canvases, that’s exactly what happened. I’m painting hope, love, happiness, sunshine, everything that I faced losing.”

Pretty heavy, I thought as he spoke from his easel this morning. But then everything is heavy these days, even as the world grows lighter and George’s paintings fill with sunshine. (Before beginning this post, I half-jokingly started one called “Poor Pitiful Me,” a saying my motherattached to my self-imposed drama years ago.)

(pictured, Sunshine Over My Future, 18x24 inches, the first painting completed by George Rodrigue after returning to his easel this fall; click photo to enlarge-)

We’re struggling to grasp this new life, particularly with regards to society and the public. George’s outlet is painting and mine is blogging, but otherwise, with the exception of commitments related to the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts, we live a bit like hermits these days, as we contemplate the meaning of this second chance.

Looking back at our calendar, usually booked months in advance, we noted that in more than one year, we had not spent a dinner out just the two of us. Accordingly, for the past four weeks we’ve enjoyed once each weekend ‘date night,’ an evening set in stone. Our lives, or rather living, depends, we’ve realized at last, on appreciating each other in action as much as thought. And we marvel at our ability to turn down with ease what we formerly saw as social obligations.

(pictured, The Path Out of an Unknown Danger, 2012, acrylic on canvas by George Rodrigue, 20x16 inches)

Let’s face it, even when we have it bad, George and I have it pretty good. I wrote this summer about George Rodrigue as one “Lucky Dog,” and I thought a lot about the nature of my own psyche--- how I worried constantly about George’s suffering, struggling even now to relax my panic, while he worried only for my future.

(pictured, Love is All Around Me, 2012, acrylic on canvas by George Rodrigue, 30x40 inches; click photo to enlarge-)

I recall a mindfulness exercise several years ago when my sister Heather lead me blindfolded into the Arizona desert as part of a relationships class. Not permitted to speak, she guided me silently around cacti and over rocks for close to an hour. At the end, the guide asked us both about our feelings.

“I’m glad it’s over!” said my sister. “I was afraid the entire time that Wendy would fall.”

I was fine, I shrugged. My sister would never let anything happen to me.

On the return, Heather wore the blindfold, and I guided her across the uneven sandy terrain, so different from our hometown beaches.

“I’m glad it’s over!” she sighed as we finished. “I was afraid the entire time that Wendy would fall.”

But I could see! I exclaimed.

“I know,” she said. “But I still worried about you.”

Wendy

-pictured above, Sunshine is Mine, 2012, acrylic on linen by George Rodrigue, 16x20 inches-

-meet George Rodrigue during his only public appearance this fall, an exhibition of portraits and a series of events surrounding the Louisiana Book Festival, October 27, 2012; story and details here-

“Shrimp boats is a-comin’; there’s dancin’ tonight!”*

After many months indoors, George Rodrigue and I ease cautiously yet eagerly this fall into adventure. Here in south Louisiana, diversion awaits in exploring small towns, riding an airboat, or simply walking on the nearest levee.

Our last adventure, some six months ago, took us past Lafayette to the city of Abbeville, Louisiana, where we followed nostalgia, visiting family in New Iberia and photographing shrimp boats at Delcambre.

George longed to revisit the boats he painted as a young man, his first paintings upon his return from art school, now misplaced and mostly forgotten, superseded by the Rodrigue oaks that followed close behind.

(pictured, the only record of Rodrigue’s early paintings of shrimp boats, Delcambre, Louisiana, watercolor on paper, 1967-8; click photos to enlarge-)

“Anytime my mama cooked shrimp, we didn’t just visit the grocery store,” explains George. “Instead we rode thirty minutes from New Iberia to the boats at Delcambre. At the time, there were three or four processing plants right on the docks, including the Dooleys, friends of our family. My mother refused to buy frozen shrimp. It had to be fresh, straight off of the boat.

“When I returned from California and art school in 1967 and decided to paint Louisiana, my first idea was to paint the shrimp boats. I photographed the docked boats at Delcambre. There were hundreds of them.”

(pictured above and below, photographs by George Rodrigue, circa 1967; today only a handful of shrimp boats remain in Delcambre where once there were hundreds; click photos to enlarge)

“I set up a dark room in a small closet at my mother’s house in New Iberia, where I developed the black-and-white film myself, making 8x10 photos of the boats. I used the pictures to paint watercolors of the shrimping industry.”

Last weekend we again traced old ground, but this time towards the crabbing industry and Pierre Part, Louisiana, now famous as the home of Troy Landry and Swamp People. More than twenty years since his last visit, George was curious about any changes brought on by the History Channel’s popular show.

(pictured, George Rodrigue stands on the corner of 55^thStreet at Avenue of the Americas in New York City, March 2012)

Instead we found a tiny town, unchanged except, exclaimed George, “Where are the restaurants?!” as we circled the lake and drove the main drag five times dreaming of fresh seafood. At last we spotted Landry’s, it’s only visible sign…well...invisible.

While pickin’ crabs, George and I exchanged childhood stories. I recalled Granny’s step-ins suspended from the clothesline by crab claws during New Orleans family reunions; Dad swimming into Choctawhatchee Bay (Fort Walton Beach, FL) on a scavenger hunt for his crab trap, tied thirty feet from the dock and loaded with raw chicken and our soon-to-be dinner; and Great Aunt Lois from her trailer on the Tchoutacabouffa River (Biloxi, MS) jumping in fear as I whispered behind her, “Help me, help me” (ala The Fly), channeling the squirming crabs as she dropped them into the boiling water.

“Those crabs are confounding!” exclaimed my Memphis friend Jan after seeing our photos. “I never understood how to eat those things.”

Surprised by her comments, I thought about the differences between areas of the South, so often lumped together as one stereotype by the national press. I grew up in the Florida Panhandle, and we consider ourselves the Deep South, akin to Alabama and Georgia, as though Disney World and Key West belong to a different state.

History favors Virginia as the true South, but any Gulf state local shakes their head with skepticism. I didn’t think of New Orleans as the South until I moved here. The accent may be more Brooklyn than drawl, but one ride past the plantations along River Road corrects the illusion. And southwest Louisiana is a different place altogether:

“I only ate crabs once as a kid,” explained George. “I went with my aunts to Pecan Island, where we walked in the water, feeling the crabs with our feet.”

Barefoot?! I exclaimed.

“I wore my tennis shoes. But my old aunts, they were tough, and they walked barefoot, collecting the crabs for that night’s feast.”

(pictured, pickin’ crabs in New Iberia, Louisiana, circa 1958. George’s mother Marie Courrege Rodrigue; George’s father George Rodrigue, Sr.; George’s aunt Magitte Courrege,; note, Tant Git, born 1880, was a traiteur or Cajun healer; read more here-)

At our house today we forego crawfish, not because we don’t love them, but because George is highly allergic (although he does enjoy painting them). Yet one of my best childhood memories is awaiting the Grela Parade on Mardi Gras Day in Gretna, eating crawfish from a plastic trashcan on the curb by 9:00 a.m.

The old “Help me” scene with Great Aunt Lois still haunts me, so you won’t find crabs scratching the underside of my gumbo pot's lid. Boiled shrimp, however, is a staple at our house, as it was during my childhood when my mother, sister and I visited the boats at the Destin Wharf.

Today George and I buy from area shrimp boats when possible or, in a pinch, from Rouses, a wondrous dream of home-grown Louisiana seafood, sausage, seasonings and, because we Southerners simply can’t help ourselves, nostalgia.

Wendy

*"Shrimp Boats" by Jo Stafford, 1951

-for related posts see "Remembering Old Biloxi" and “Dancing the Shrimp” both stories for Gambit Weekly-

-for more art and discussion, please join me on facebook-

“All I see is that you’re writing with a pen. Yay!!!”

Author Patty Friedmann cheered the hand-written word after seeing the photo below. It was December 2010, and I scribbled on the pages of a purse-size artsy notebook, purchased annually in multiples from the Morgan Library museum shop.

George Rodrigue photographed me as I sat on the steps of a former military base, one of eight bunkers now housing Dan Flavin neon installations at the Chinati Foundation in the remote town of Marfa, Texas.

The resulting essays became two of my most popular: “New York Art in West Texas” for Musings of an Artist's Wife and a related story for Gambit Weekly, “Rejecting the Metaphor: Discovering Modern Art in West Texas.” (click the titles for the stories-)

Gambit spotlighted their essay for a week with a photo on the New Orleans newspaper’s opening page, and numerous art sites shared the funny Musings account of George Rodrigue’s Marfa comments long before he talked me into risking a public facebook page of my own.

Thousands of readers, whether or not they accepted concrete boxes and crushed cars as art, related to these stories for their honest and non art-speak account of a minimalist installation designed, let’s face it, for the art elite.

Yet in my mind I still was not a writer. The posts are a compilation of George’s photographs and comments and, as he himself stated,

“What people don’t realize, Wendy, is that all of that funny stuff you write is really me!”

Indeed.

(pictured, Don’t Come Around Here While I’m Hot, 2012, acrylic on canvas by George Rodrigue, 20x24 inches; finished this week in New Orleans-)

Recently while waiting in line at a pharmacy window, a woman asked me in one breath, as New Orleanians will do, my opinion on this newly renovated Elysian Fields Walgreens and if I thought she overdid it that morning on her royal blue eye shadow, a gift from her daughter.

Predictably, we moved quickly on to the Saints and the price of shrimp-per-pound followed by the question that, although somehow inoffensive in her thick yat accent, I hoped to avoid,

“Dahlin', what do you do for a livin'?”

She leaned hard against the railing, obviously in pain from her recent knee replacement surgery, and I knew that my standard reply, I have an art gallery with my husband, moves quickly to “What kind of art?,” followed by “What does he paint?,” followed by “What’s the story of the Blue Dog?,” all more than I felt like answering on this Sunday morning and certainly more than she needed in her uncomfortable condition.

I’m a writer, I stated verbally for the first time in my life.

“You write books?!,” she exclaimed, obviously impressed. “Which ones?”

I back-pedaled, explaining that I work on art books, and that unless she was into modern art, she probably wouldn’t have seen them.

“Which artists?” she asked….

….and before I knew it I was exactly where I didn’t want to be….explaining the history of the Blue Dog to a growing crowd at Walgreens while the artist himself waited in the car outside, where he called our brunch guests, explaining that we’d be late and wondering what on earth detained me.

(pictured, Rodrigue books at the Louisiana Book Festival last weekend; click photo to enlarge-)

George Rodrigue, however, introduces me often with the words,

“This is my wife Wendy. She’s a writer.”

My heroes are writers, just as my heroes are artists, and I stammer in reply to what I see as an undeserving title.

I’ve contributed to, compiled and/or edited eight Rodrigue books since 1994. Yet it’s not the same as writing my own.

(pictured....posing star struck during last weekend’s Louisiana Book Festival with a real writer, Shirley Ann Grau, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Keepers of the House in 1965; behind us, upper right, is George Rodrigue’s portrait of Grau, part of an installation, “Walker Percy, Sylvester Stallone and the Blue Dog,” on view through November 30, 2012 at the State Library of Louisiana-)

It was author David Lummis who first labeled me a writer and gave me the courage to use the word within bios and on-line.

Now, thanks to a persistent and courageous UL Press, I’ll release my first solo book, a collection of essays from Musings of an Artist’s Wife, in bookstores nationwide, Fall 2013.

Will you join me on the book tour? I asked George, laughing, as I imagined him swapping out old sharpies and spelling dedications in my ear.

“Yes!” he replied, to my surprise. “It’ll be fun!”

With that, we hope to see you on the road (and at our favorite festival) next fall-

Wendy

-for more art and discussion, please join me on facebook-

Blue Dog artist George Rodrigue finds inspiration on the Monterey Peninsula-

It was twenty-two years ago that artist George Rodrigue (b. 1944) opened his gallery in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. One of only two locations* in the country, the artist-owned Rodrigue Studio operates the same way today as it did years ago. Despite Rodrigue’s increasing fame, he resists mass production and wholesaling, offering his works only through his galleries in Carmel and New Orleans (opened 1989). The original paintings and silkscreens ship worldwide from these locations, each piece created by Rodrigue’s own hand.

In 2000, Rodrigue and his wife Wendy purchased a home in Mid-Valley, just inland of Carmel-by-the-Sea’s coastal fog. Since that time, although he lives also in New Orleans, Louisiana, he paints ninety percent of his work amidst the sunshine and rolling hills of central California, an area close to his heart since his school days at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles in the mid-1960s.

(pictured, George Rodrigue at his easel, Carmel, California, 2010; click photo to enlarge-)

Born and raised in New Iberia, Louisiana, this Cajun first made a name for himself as a landscape and portrait artist. Since 1969 his paintings of the Cajun culture, including posters for events such as the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival and Lafayette Mardi Gras, as well as five Louisiana Governor portraitsincluding Kathleen Blanco and Bobby Jindal, and myths such as Evangelineand the loup-garou, endeared Rodrigue to south Louisiana residents long before a Blue Dog catapulted him to world-wide fame in the early 1990s.

(pictured, The Kingfish: Governor Huey Long by George Rodrigue, 1980, 60x36 inches; click photo to enlarge)

It was such a Cajun story, in fact, the loup-garou, that inspired the Blue Dog. As a boy, Rodrigue’s motherused the legend like the bogie man, threatening,

“If you’re not good today, the loup-garou will eat you tonight!”

Rodrigue first painted this werewolf-like ghost dog in 1984 for a book of Louisiana ghost stories. He used photographs of his dog Tiffany, who had already died, immortalizing her in shape and design not as a family pet, but rather as a Cajun-French legend said to lurk in cemeteries and sugarcane fields.

(pictured, Watchdogis the first Blue Dog painting, 1984, oil on canvas by George Rodrigue, 40x30 inches)

The strong image appealed to Rodrigue, and over time he changed the dog into a tighter shape, bluer color, and friendlier presence. The early paintings’ red eyes turned yellow, and the grey-blue shade, first inspired by a blue moon and dark night sky, gradually became bolder and even electric, leaving little reminder of the Blue Dog’s ghoulish beginnings.

(pictured, Rodrigue at his easel, Carmel-by-the-Sea; click photo to enlarge-)

It was in Carmel that Rodrigue painted God Bless America on the night of September 11^th 2001, raising $500,000 for the American Red Cross. He painted his Hurricanes in California long before Hurricane Katrina ravaged his home state. Selections from the seventy abstract round canvases swirl across the walls of museums nationwide, painted on the Monterey Peninsula yet symbolizing Mother Nature’s power as fed by the Gulf of Mexico and familiar to Rodrigue firsthand throughout his life.

(pictured, Lili, 2002, water-based oil on canvas by George Rodrigue, 36 inch diameter)

It was also in Carmel that Rodrigue conceived of and painted Bodies, a series of figurative works blending his love of the classical nude, the mystique of Louisiana’s aboveground cemeteries, and the symbolism of his own creation, the Blue Dog.

(pictured, Green with Envy, 2005 by George Rodrigue)

In 2013, for the first time in a decade, George Rodrigue devotes one year to working exclusively in California. This commitment includes a major Rodrigue museum exhibition at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, as well as an ambitious partnership between the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Artsand the Arts Council for Monterey County, sharing art with thousands of central California students through painting demonstrations, lectures and school visits.

“For years I’ve given back to my home state of Louisiana,” says Rodrigue, “but California has given me just as much, and in 2013 I hope to return the favor.”

Wendy

*Rodrigue also has a small location open by appointment in Lafayette, Louisiana

-note: this post is from an upcoming article within De LUXE Carmel Magazine; for a related story see "A Cajun in California," linked here-

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“Yoga relaxes me,” says George Rodrigue. “The minute Wendy starts her practice, I fall asleep.”

Recently a friend asked me why I never blog about yoga. For fifteen years the practice infiltrates every part of my life, assisting me with decisions, anxiety, injuries, and relationships.

I promise, George, that if I attend this silent retreat, I’ll return a better wife, I explain annually prior to a week-long journey into mindfulness, without speech, eye contact or computers.

Trepidation keeps me from writing about yoga, the same concerns I feel in writing about modeling for George. To me, most yoga books and essays reek of self-importance, the ironic result behind a compassionate intent.

-click photo to enlarge-

(pictured, our nephew William practices yoga last week in Tallahassee, Florida as part of his BMX training; notice George Rodrigue’s silkscreen on the right, My Future’s So Bright I’ve Gotta Wear Shades, 1993; on the left is my mother’s painting, Spring Bouquet, the basis for George Rodrigue’s Mignon’s Flowers, pictured below and detailed here-)

“Yoga,” explains George Rodrigue, who abides my practice without practicing himself, “is obviously a very disciplined activity, something between a sport and a meditation, depending on how you approach it. It’s similar to painting where one keeps a serious concentration, dedication, and relationship to the art. Both are exercises in discipline.”

I began a yoga practice during our first year of marriage. It was my saving grace in dealing with a strong-willed mother-in-law who lived with us in Lafayette, Louisiana. As I morphed quickly into someone I disliked, I embraced yoga, hoping to approach the people in my home and community with a kinder attitude. For one hour each day I closed myself into the spare bedroom and repeated the same beginner’s tape:

“Relax your forehead...”

...instructed yogi Alan Finger as I melted into Shavasana, or ‘Corpse Pose,’ following the active postures. After ten months of this same instruction, I realized with surprise that my forehead, joining the rest of me, was relaxed already.

“Feel yourself undefended, wide open like the sky...”

...suggests Erich Schiffmann in tape number two. It was during this time that I experienced my first retreat, a week in the woods near Helena, Montana, attending daily classes and lectures by Schiffmann, embracing his mantra and “moving into stillness.”

(pictured, from the series Swamp Dogs by George Rodrigue-)

From the beginning, I practiced without my glasses. Unable to focus on details in the room, my mind turns inward. For me, the challenges of yoga lie not within a full straddle splits or headstand (neither of which are part of my practice), but rather in facing my internal world without distractions.

This summer, after fifteen years of daily practice, I spent three months without yoga.

For years I’ve practiced on the road, even during marathon national book tours with George, sometimes traveling to twenty cities in a month. I spread my travel mat on well-trodden hotel-room carpets, quieting my mind before the happy chaos of crowds ---Rodrigue fans with dedications, collectors with questions, children with their own Blue Dog paintings. Yoga keeps me grounded on these travels. Strengthened by my practice, I greet strangers as friends.

“At least you have yoga!”

...said my friends this summer as George and I lived between a Houston hotel room and hospital fighting his illness.

Yet, during the time I most needed it, I couldn’t practice. In the silence, the reality of our situation smothered me. Each time I practiced, I fought against my emotions, and, for better or worse, I won.

(above: the ‘fuzz’ also won, despite the dangers…)

Since returning to New Orleans in August, I embrace again a daily yoga practice, just as George again embraces painting. It was difficult and frustrating battling my closed mind and body, and the first two months included only the gentle pull of Yin (long slow stretches) until I felt the call to move. Through DVD, I turn to my current instructors, Sarah and Ty Powers of Marin County, California, and covet their wisdom as I intensify my home practice.

(pictured, with Sarah and Ty Powers in the Jean Lafitte Historic National Park and Preserve, January 2012)

I cultivate this re-entry into yoga with a ‘beginner’s mind.’ Past the frustration, I’m thankful for this opportunity to approach my practice anew, adding Yang asana (stronger, flowing postures) to the Yin and, cautiously, meditation to both. Once again, I cling to a mantra, this one shared with Sarah by her teacher, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and with her students by Sarah, and now with you:

“Let be in equanimity.”

Wendy

-in New Orleans, I also recommend Amanda Rubenstein-Stern at Wild Lotus Yoga-

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George Rodrigue’s newest painting, Blue Dog Oak, reunites his favorite subjects in acrylic colors blended adeptly, as though oils. Unlike his dark oaks of the early 1970s, Rodrigue’s trees today glow with intense hues; yet the rules remain as the hard edges and almost puzzle-like structure control his composition.

-click photo to enlarge-

(pictured, Blue Dog Oak, 2012 by George Rodrigue, 24x36 inches, acrylic on canvas)

The Blue Dog stands framed, surrounded by a pattern of sky and shadowed ground, the stylized fur beneath its ears echoing the oak’s pointed moss. Without negative spaces, the painting’s structure defies reality. The spaces between the branches create interesting shapes, clearly a self-imposed challenge for the artist.

(pictured, Rodrigue at his easel, November 2012, New Orleans)

Rodrigue paints the dog as though it’s a Cajun person. Glowing in blue rather than white, it stands strong with the tree. For Rodrigue, the tree and dog represent his best friends in art, the shapes he made his own. Over the years, they grow and change on his canvas just as he does in life.

As with his paintings of Cajun folk life, the light shines from beneath the tree. For the Cajuns, this represents their hope, a longing to make a home for themselves in the swamps of southwest Louisiana following their deportment from Nova Scotiain 1755.

In recent paintings, however, Rodrigue paints the light not with the hope of the Cajun people, but rather with a general hope, a brighter future for all, as represented by the now omnipresent Blue Dog.

“People often ask me,” says Rodrigue, ‘Are you still painting oak trees?,’ and I reply, ‘Only when I want to.’ When I paint them today, it’s like visiting an old friend. As with real friends, this reunion gives me pleasure.”

In Blue Dog Oak, Rodrigue reunites his established subjects on canvas, comfortable with their shapes and symbolism yet challenged, always, to create something unique, if not in subject, then in design and impression, as he seeks a finished painting titillating to his eye.

While exploring new directions in mixed media and chrome(movie stars in the works!), it is Rodrigue’s old friends, the Oak Tree and Blue Dog, which propel him forward even as they, like Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart, connect him to the past.

Wendy

-pictured above, Marilyn Monroe and other stars, unique large-scale works on chrome, coming soon-

-for a related post, see “Sunshine and Love: New Paintings”-

-for more art and discussion, please join me on facebook-

George Rodrigue’s newest artwork, Some Like It Hot, pays tribute to Marilyn Monroe, a golden icon of the silver screen and public fantasy. He frames her with a bold design of color and shape, including his own icons, the Blue and Red Dogs.

(pictured, Some Like It Hot, 2012 by George Rodrigue, 26x40 inches, silkscreen edition 125; click photo to enlarge-)

Countless artists capture Marilyn in their own interpretations, made most famous in art by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and photographers Ben Stern and Douglas Kirkland. For Rodrigue, who grew out of the Pop Art movement, the pairing with his Blue Dog is a natural. Marilyn is one of the few subjects strong enough to hold its own against his invented image, joining its Red Dog counterpart in a design-battle with the screen goddess.

“We think we know movie stars as people,", explains Rodrigue, "but in real life they are someone else. The camera loves their look, and as a result we as an audience interpret what they think. We are seduced by their character.

“The Blue Dog is similar. You may look at it and think one thing, but deep down there’s always a mystery of why and what it is.

“These two classical icons together create an even greater mystery. And to me, that’s the definition of art.”

As with many Marilyn fans, Rodrigue's fascination with her look and presence is enduring. In 2004, on his 60^th birthday, he insisted that his guests attend as Marilyn Monroe or Elvis “The King” Presley. The party was a literal and visual blast as a sea of bobbing Elvis wigs mixed with platinum ‘dos on the dance floor. A special fan within a small wooden stage blew dresses high over heads, and I mimicked “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” in my best breathy delivery.

(photograph by Tabitha Soren)

My mother, Mignon, had a definite Marilyn thing about her. Even now her Marilyn Monroe dress, 1960, hangs in my closet and occasionally on my person, transporting me like magic into a slice of that sparkle, something I like to think exists to some extent within every woman…. as well as the occasional daring and beautiful man.

I recall as a child turning carefully the fragile pages of my mom’s Marilyn Monroe scrapbook. During the 1950s she collected hundreds of photographs from LIFEMagazine, along with movie advertisements and snippets from gossip columns. She noted Monroe’s clothing, travels, and dinner companions.

This obsession rubbed off on my sister and me, not as crazed Monroe fans, but rather as devotees in our mother’s honor. Upon her death, we searched frantically, without success, for the scrapbook.

(photograph by George Rodrigue)

For George Rodrigue, Marilyn Monroe is the first of a series of classic celebrity images, as he works even now on designs incorporating Humphrey Bogart and James Dean. However, these fine art silkscreens, although stunning, are not his ultimate goal. Rather, within weeks his 6-foot unique versions on chrome, similar to his series Swamp Dogs, will appear on the gallery walls.

Imagine it.... Not since Warhol, “so much Marilyn….*” and Blue Dog… on metal! I can’t wait!

Wendy

*"so much Marilyn...." from the trailer for the movie Some Like It Hot, 1959

-a note from George Rodrigue: "Sensitive to copyright issues, I looked carefully with my attorney into the use of old Hollywood images. To my surprise, many movie studios in the late 1950s and early 1960s did not copyright their promotional images for films. They were meant to be distributed widely as a way of increasing the celebrity's fame."

-for more information on the new Some Like It Hot artwork, silkscreen or chrome, contact Rodrigue Studio at this link-

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Like ghosts of Evangeline, André Chastant’s daughters float brilliant in white and framed within the landscape of southwest Louisiana. The painting, a combination of photograph and imagination, is my favorite from George Rodrigue’s Cajun period.

These daughters are not posed around their father as though for a photograph. Rather, they exist as one unit, a wave-like, footless, luminous shape encased by oak trees and bushes. Lacking his daughters’ brilliance, their father stands barely noticeable, like a shadow among the shadow-less girls.

-click photo to enlarge-

(pictured, The Daughters of André Chastant, 1971 by George Rodrigue, 24x36 inches, oil on canvas)

The Daughters of André Chastant first appeared in print in the landmark book, The Cajuns of George Rodrigue (1976, Oxmoor House), the first book published nationally on the Cajun culture, also recommended by the National Endowment for the Arts to First Lady Rosalind Carter, who chose it as an official Gift of State during the Carter Administration. Within, Rodrigue wrote in English and French about the painting:

“Typical of Louisiana are men such as André Chastant whose life centered around his political campaigns. Once when running for sheriff, he chose to emphasize the necessity of the Cajuns preserving their heritage by dressing his daughters up as early Acadians and sending them out into the parish on the campaign trail.”

I asked him years ago about this tale and received the answer I now expect:

“I made it up.”

The real story, however, is just as interesting, if not more so. The original photograph includes his mother, Marie Courrege (second from left), and her friends gathered at a train depot in New Iberia, Louisiana in the 1920s. They wore Evangeline costumes and sang for a visiting French dignitary following his speech from the back of a caboose.

Rodrigue removed the girls from the train station, pasting them instead into a Louisiana landscape. He cut the Frenchman from the train and inserted him within the design, renaming him Chastant, a key portrait within his Aioli Dinner of the same year, and imagining him as a father-figure to his mother and her friends.

Although the photograph inspiring this painting is lost, this type of tribute exists throughout twentieth century Cajun history. The infamous Louisiana politician Dudley LeBlanc posed with Evangeline-clad young women in front of the White House in the 1950s, followed a decade later by President John F. Kennedy.

Rodrigue’s painting includes his typical oaks, cut off at the top so that the light shines from beneath. The girls, trees, bushes and sky weave together in a deliberate pattern, locked without room for changes of any kind.

Subtlety does exist, however, within this highly ordered work. At first glance the painting appears black and white. Yet Rodrigue insists,

“My palette during those years was as bright as my Blue Dogpalette today.”

Indeed, a closer look reveals reds, blues and yellows, visible throughout the original painting, but most obvious in the photograph within the dresses and sky. (Be sure and click the photo to enlarge).

Notice in the painting how the figures never touch the sky. They exist only within the strong shapes of a Rodrigue landscape, their hard edges belying their ghostly aura. Rodrigue is famous for saying that the Cajuns “glow with their culture.” Like his fabricated story of the sheriff and his daughters, he uses subject, design and symbolism to create a suspension of disbelief.

In The Daughters of André Chastant, as with most of his Cajun paintings, Rodrigue crosses time and reality, questioning the importance of both.

Wendy

-for a related post, see “Broussard's Barber Shop: Melding Fact with Fiction”-

-for more on Marie Rodrigue, see the story “The Artist’s Mother.” For more paintings with Marie, see “The Class” and “Boudreaux in a Barrel”-

-although this is my favorite painting from Rodrigue’s Cajun period, my favorite painting of all time is a Blue Dog from 1991, linked here-

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In the early 1950s, it was the movies more than television that made the biggest impact on mainstream American culture. Today during school visits, I describe this environment to students, imagining a young George Rodrigue isolated from society during six months with polio in 1952.

“He was an only child, bed-ridden with a contagious disease,” I explain. “His friends couldn’t visit, and his family had no television.”

Yet I receive little reaction, certainly not the gasp I expect, until I venture,

“And they had no computer...”

.....a statement prompting near-hysteria as today’s youngest generation absorbs the shock of life before the internet.

The point of the story, which I’ve written about here in detail, is that his mother cured his boredom with the Lone Ranger radio show, colored modeling clay, and a new 1950s invention called paint-by-number. In other words, the crippling disease, the simple, pre-techno times, and a devoted parent sparked an artist’s destiny.

-click photo to enlarge-

(pictured, George Rodrigue, New Iberia, 1950. For more on this photo read the story, “The Ghost of Christmas Past”)

Yet just as the computer’s novelty surpassed the television, and the television altered the radio and movie experience, in the 1950s the double-feature and drive-in reigned, enchanting and inspiring all ages.

I remember my mom talking about double and even triple features at the Abalon Theater in Algiers on the West Bank of New Orleans. She and my uncle purchased hot tamales from the corner vendor (a pre-cursor to Lucky Dogs, a Rodrigue favorite), sneaking them into the movie house. They spent four to six hours on Sunday afternoons hiding from movie management and draping greasy tamale wrappers over the back row seats.

-click photo to enlarge-

(Nurturing this nostalgia, Mardi Gras authority Arthur Hardy published recently There’s One In Your Neighborhood: The Lost Movie Theaters of New Orleans, featuring the Abalon and others, a collection compiled and recorded by Rene Brunet Jr. and Jack Stewart, 2012; available for purchase here- )

But for George Rodrigue, the single greatest movie experience* of his life occurred in 1954 with the release of The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

“I was ten years old, and I saw the movie on a Wednesday at the Evangeline Theatre on Main Street in New Iberia,” recalls Rodrigue. “I know it was a Wednesday because it was double-feature day for six cents. I don’t remember the other movie, but the creature stayed in my mind.

“I liked it because it looks like it was filmed in Louisiana, even though it was filmed in Florida. The creature appears half-alligator and half-man, living in the swamps. I guess it was the first Louisiana ghost story I associated myself with, other than my mom’s scary threats of the loup-garou.”

(pictured, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, painted by George Rodrigue, 1960)

“Several years later I was a Boy Scout at Camp Thistlethwaite in Washington, Louisiana and ran the craft section of the General Store. In addition to sweeping up, I gave courses on painting, basket-weaving, and carving.”

You taught basket-weaving!? I interjected.

“We had all kinds of kits,” he explained, “including woodworking, beading and others. I also sold cokes and candy.

“I had a small studio in the back of the store, and in my spare time I painted on cardboard. My proudest moment was when the camp director asked me to paint a picture of his fishing camp. I did it for free just so I could say that my artwork hung in his camp.”

So how does this tie in with The Creature from the Black Lagoon? I asked.

“One day I painted The Creature and hung it in the Thistlethwaite General Store. It attracted lots of attention, but I wouldn’t sell it.”

People wanted to buy it?

“Sure….for more money than I made all summer in the store. But it was mine,”

...he shrugged, unhooking the fifty-three year old painting from the wall beside his easel.

“Still is.”

Wendy

*not to be confused with “the single greatest movie ever made,” according to George Rodrigue: The Searchers, starring John Wayne, 1956-

*Rodrigue went on to become an Eagle Scout in 1960. In 2011 he received the Boy Scouts of America’s highest honor, Distinguished Eagle. Read the story here-

-pictured above, George Rodrigue at home in New Orleans, January 2, 2013; although he kept his original Creature from the Black Lagoon, he went on to paint similar monsters on t-shirts, earning gas money in high school-

-Mike Scott spotlights this weekend’s TCM “black-and-white creature features,” including The Creature from the Black Lagoon for the Times-Picyune in a 1/2/13 story for the paper, linked here-

-for more art and discussion, please join me on facebook-

Louisiana Legends

Courage for Our Friends

Dogs in Space

Cow Dogs

Painting (and Living?) Again

The Acrylic Landscape

Harouni Paints Rodrigue

Blue Fall in Louisiana

Walker Percy, Sylvester Stallone and the Blue Dog

The Patchwork Gift

Going Home Again....for Art

Sunshine and Love: New Paintings

Paintin' Shrimp Boats and Pickin’ Crabs

I'm a Writer!

A Cajun in Carmel

Yoga: One Essay Only

Blue Dog Oak (Old Friends)

Some Like It Hot

The Daughters of André Chastant

George Rodrigue's Creature from the Black Lagoon