I asked Rodrigue if the Blue Dog had disappeared. He replied, "No, I am the Blue Dog man. He has become me." Would he paint the Blue Dog again? Rodrigue responded, "I refuse to predict what I am going to paint next."

The fifty-nine-year-old New Iberia native began painting when he suffered a bout with polio at the age of nine. "I was sick. The doctor was afraid to tell my parents what I had. It was a month before he told them it was polio." His parents took him to doctors in Baton Rouge. Recovery was slow, and Rodrigue's recuperation lasted for over a year. As he lay on the couch with nothing to do, his mother gave him modeling clay and a paint-by-numbers set. "The paint sets had just come out." Grinning, Rodrigue said, "I didn't stay in the lines."

The boy grew to be a man. He majored in graphic arts at the Los Angeles Art Center College of Design in the '60s. I asked, "What artists influenced your work?"

Without hesitation, Rodrigue replied, "My teachers influenced me the most. I suppose if I had to pick an artist, it would be Salvador Dali. I studied art, but you have to throw all that away and the art has to be truly yours. That is why I returned to Louisiana and painted what I knew."

What he knew was the landscape of his home. He painted oak trees over and over. He began to experiment with people and added the Cajuns to his work. The people in his painting are white, ghost-like figures with sharp edges that contrast to the dark landscapes.

In the late '70s, Rodrigue's work was gaining national attention. His book, "The Cajuns of George Rodrigue," was chosen as the official U.S. State Department gift for visiting foreign heads of state during the Carter administration. In 1980, Rodrigue had an exhibit in Paris featuring "The Kingfish." He was dubbed the "Louisiana Rousseau" by the French newspaper Le Figaro.

It was during this time that Rodrigue was commissioned to paint portraits of well-known Louisianans such as Paul Prudhomme and Huey Long. Maintaining his style, he positioned the people on his signature Louisiana landscapes. At the request of the Republican Party, Rodrigue was commissioned to paint Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan for the 1988 Moscow summit. He painted former President Reagan on a white horse dressed in cowboy attire (the hat is also white) with a bald eagle perched above his head.

The last portrait Rodrigue did was in 2000. Al Hirt's wife asked him to paint the deceased musician for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival poster. Rodrigue was honored by the request. The Al Hirt painting was the third he had done for Jazz Fest, having previously painted Louis Armstrong and Pete Fountain.
Will he paint more portraits? Shaking his head "no," Rodrigue said, "You have to please too many people."

THE BLUE DOG

In 1984, Rodrigue painted the Loup-Garou, a mythical Cajun werewolf, for a collection of Cajun ghost stories. "When I was a child, my mother told me if I wasn't good, the Loup-Garou will come and eat me. The gray, shaggy wolf with red eyes was scary. I painted him as though he were a person-at eye-level. He was a ghost dog. I began to paint him blue and then bluer. He was a symbol."
The Blue Dog evolved from Rodrigue's Cajun roots and old photographs of dogs that he had owned. "I threw out the photographs (figuratively speaking) and began to paint the Blue Dog."

"We look at the dog and the dog looks at us. We ask questions looking into the eyes of a dog or a ghost-not expecting the ghost dog to have answers. The artist poses a question. We (the observer and artist) should both learn. Something else is going on other than the Blue Dog," said Rodrigue.

The electric Blue Dog became a pop-culture icon and a commercial success. A Blue Dog painting shares an office in Tom Brokaw's home. The Neiman-Marcus catalogue has featured Blue Dog three times and the celebrity canine has been used in ad campaigns to sell ink-jet printers for Xerox and liquor for Absolut Vodka.

While Rodrigue continued to paint the Blue Dog, he wrote books about his art. He has published "Blue Dog," "Blue Dog Love," "A Blue Dog Christmas," and "Blue Dog Man." Last year, "Why is Blue Dog Blue?" was selected by Child magazine as one of the best children's books of the year. "It isn't easy to do a children's book. I started with the answer and worked my way backwards," said Rodrigue. The artist explores colors not often found in children's books: salmon, cherry and moss green. The Blue Dog is painted many colors besides blue in the charming picture book that encourages aspiring artists to follow their imaginations.

HURRICANES

Rodrigue's art is an expression of what he knows. He has painted Louisiana landscapes, Cajuns, the Loup-Garou, his pet dogs, and now hurricanes. In October 2002, he spent seven hours filled with fear and anxiety as raging winds took down a 100-year-old oak tree in the front yard of his Louisiana home. "I hadn't been in a hurricane in 15 years. I'd forgotten what the fury was all about."

Three days later, Rodrigue began painting his canvases with vibrant blues, yellows, pink, green and orange. The pieces are named Betsy, Camille, Inez and Francesca. Like a storm, the art moves. "I paint from a feeling. Art is expression," said Rodrigue.

Louisiana and the Blue Dog are no longer visible in Rodrigue's work, but they are still within the man.

Rodrigue's Hurricane series is on display exclusively at his gallery in Carmel, but the new abstracts will soon be at his New Orleans gallery. Those wishing to view his earlier works can visit the George Rodrigue Museum at Acadian Village in Lafayette. Later this year, New York Times art critic and historian Ginger Danto's retrospective book on Rodrigue's work will be published. The working title of the book is "The Best of George Rodrigue."

Copyright 2003, M&L Publishing, all rights reserved.