“Medicine is an art, not a science,” explained a friend recently, as I struggled with misdiagnoses and conflicting reports. “Fifteen people looked at my wife’s images,” he continued, “and only one analyzed it correctly.” (pictured, Dr. Dog, a 7-foot mixed media on chrome, from the collection of Lafayette General Hospital as part of the GeorgeContinue reading “Hopeful (Discomfort)”
Category Archives: Musings
Landlocked Pirogues & Blue Dog’s Eyes (The Art of Improvisation)
“People are moving in time and in history, in a pirogue, on land…” …wrote George Rodrigue in 1975 about his painting, John Courrege’s Pirogue. The painting is one of seventy-eight images featured in the book The Cajuns of George Rodrigue, the first book published nationally on the Cajun culture (Oxmoor House, 1976, detailed here). FromContinue reading “Landlocked Pirogues & Blue Dog’s Eyes (The Art of Improvisation)”
Aunt Wendy and the Cones
It was five years ago that our nephews, age four and six, summoned me from the kitchen where, while cooking dinner, I strained my ears towards their whispers in the den. What on earth?, I thought, imagining the content of this intense powwow: How do we change Aunt Wendy’s mind about Transformers? How does the tooth fairyContinue reading “Aunt Wendy and the Cones”
Crawfish Dreams and Artist Friends
George Rodrigue loves crawfish primarily as a symbol of Cajun culture. The shellfish itself is deadly to him, inducing a closed throat and limited breathing. “Soon after I did my crawfish festival poster, I developed practically overnight an allergy to crawfish. Even the smell of the boil leaves me wheezing and my wife running forContinue reading “Crawfish Dreams and Artist Friends”
Rodrigue’s Bicentennial Poster
George Rodrigue painted the Aioli Dinner in 1971 based on photographs of a gourmet dinner club, the Creole Gourmet Society. This was his first painting with people, and during the six months that he painted their portraits and a landscape on this single canvas, he developed a style uniquely his own and recognizable today, fortyContinue reading “Rodrigue’s Bicentennial Poster”