The Cajuns of George Rodrigue By 1975 George Rodrigue was painting forty canvases a year, all scenes of Cajun folk-life stemming from his first painting with people, Aioli Dinner (1971), and incorporating the distinctive oak trees from his landscapes as well. Although he had a gallery in Lafayette, Louisiana, he was selling most of hisContinue reading “Two Publishing Stories: The Cajuns and Blue Dog”
Category Archives: Musings
The Creative Competition in Two Parts
Part I I grew up in an artistic household in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. My parents, although originally from New Orleans, settled there when my dad was stationed at Eglin Air Force Base. In the first ten years of their marriage, they lived and traveled all over Europe and Asia with the military, and byContinue reading “The Creative Competition in Two Parts”
Blue Dog: In the Beginning, 1984-1989
In 1980 a Baton Rouge investment group approached George Rodrigue for help in creating a lasting Louisiana memento, a book of Louisiana ghost stories to be sold at the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans. Author Chris Segura embellished forty rather gruesome tales, and Rodrigue researched regional myths and legends for appropriate imagery, resulting inContinue reading “Blue Dog: In the Beginning, 1984-1989”
The Aioli Dinner and a Cajun Artist
The first time I saw the original Aioli Dinner, I was struck by its monochromaticity. It is a green painting through and through. You don’t notice it in a photograph and certainly not in a print (as explained below), but the painting itself exudes the swamp, and one almost feels the mugginess, smells the sweat,Continue reading “The Aioli Dinner and a Cajun Artist”
Early Oak Trees and a Regrettable Self-Portrait
It was on the long drives back from The Art Center College of Design in California that George Rodrigue developed his style. He’d been thinking about it for some time – about how different South Louisiana is from other places, as well as the eighteen hundred miles of cities and countryside and Americans he passedContinue reading “Early Oak Trees and a Regrettable Self-Portrait”