George Rodrigue and the Blue Dog

George Rodrigue

Blue Dog by George Rodrigue  google image photo

Blue Dog by George Rodrigue photo by Elizabeth Gordon

George Rodrigue was born and raised in the heart of the Cajun country, New Iberia. He was born in 1944. He studied art at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles and attending graduate school.  It was during at time when Pop and Abstract art were very influential. Though the draw on New York art world was strong,  he returned to the land, people and culture he loved.  He used symbols to express his Cajun and Southern roots.  An oak tree became a symbol that he painted in hundreds of pictures  and using a pallet of colors that hinted of Cajun myth and ghost stories he had been told as a child.  One could almost feel the stories of Evangeline and Jolie Blonde come alive in the dark brooding mossy landscapes of Rodigue's Cajun country.   One of the childhood stories he had been told as a child brought about loop-garou....a werewolf type dog. He searched for the right shape and image he wanted and it found it in the photo of a study dog that hard passed away four years before...Tiffany was chosen to be the basis of the Blue Dog. The Blue dog began appearing in his bayou scenes and cemeteries...he changed the dogs eye color to yellow to make it friendlier while he allowed the shape to become more of a pop icon that could take him anywhere artistically. Prior to Katrina Rodrigue did a number of round canvases he called his hurricane series.  It became a prophetic series.  

George Rodrigue's work is shown nationally and internationally. He now has a gallery in New Orleans on Royal Street and one in Carmel, California.  He lives and works in New Orleans.  

A side note...the first time I know I became aware of his work was before Blue Dog, when I came to New Orleans and was captivated by a Louisiana cookbook with some of his landscape pictures.  I went on to a book store to buy a book of his earlier landscapes that felt so eerie a ghost could walk right out from behind the oaks.  I remember when I saw the first Blue Dog on his realistic landscapes and thought what a daring move for an artist.  And I still think it was heroic...the art world and critics can be finicky, but an artists must take risk to grow....and he did and he grew!!!

George Rodrigue/Artist

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