Wendy Rodrigue on George Rodrigue's "Virtual Reality"
Two Louisiana myths meet in George Rodrigue's world
Here is an edited (for clarity and brevity) transcript from a recent conversation we had with the late George Rodrigue’s wife Wendy regarding our October 2021 cover image, “Virtual Reality,” (1992) and the role of myth in George’s expansive body of work. Read more about Rodrigue and Evangeline in this story from our issue.
“The first thing that comes to mind when I think about the Evangeline story is the Rodrigue brothers. George was descended from four Rodrigue brothers, who actually walked from the little community in Grand Pré in Nova Scotia all the way down to South Louisiana. And so, as you can imagine, that history was very important to him. So, this whole idea of Evangeline and that journey—in the case of the Rodrigue brothers and the Cajun people, they were searching. They were on a journey to find a new home. And of course, in Evangeline’s case, she was searching to find Gabriel, to find her love. So that sort of a connection kind of leant itself unequivocally to the romance of the whole Cajun tragedy, as well as hope that there is a light at the end of that journey.
“So, if you look at many of George’s paintings—including ‘Virtual Reality,’ there is this light in the distance, this swirling light. For George, that distant light represented this hope. He tried to represent this intangible concept of hope for a better tomorrow, not just for the Cajuns, not just for Evangeline, but for everyone. I always loved that.
“The myths were very important to George. Evangeline was the first legend he painted. When Evangeline is pictured, sometimes her body gets wrapped up into the tree, glowing like a ghost. And who better to represent these glowing ghostly Cajuns of the past than Evangeline? The ultimate Cajun glowing ghost.
“As for the Blue Dog—which of course also grew out of a myth, the rougarou—it all began when he was little boy, and his mother used to use the loup-garou threat. She used to tell him, “Baby George, if you’re not good today, the loup-garou’s gonna eat you tonight.”
The myths were very important to George. Evangeline was the first legend he painted. When Evangeline is pictured, sometimes her body gets wrapped up into the tree, glowing like a ghost. And who better to represent these glowing ghostly Cajuns of the past than Evangeline? The ultimate Cajun glowing ghost.
“Later, in 1984 he was illustrating a book of Cajun ghost stories called Bayou for the 1984 Worlds Fair in New Orleans. And that myth was one of the stories in there. What he did is he wanted to come up with the image. He went to his photo files. He always worked from photographs even though he always fabricated his scenes. He had these photos of a dog he had had years before. She had been dead for years at that point. To photograph her, he used to lie down and get eye-level with her. He used to say that he wanted to photograph her in that way to show that she was just as important as a person. They had this exchange. The result was that it sparked his imagination when he was thinking about painting this legend. He thought, okay I’ll paint something that is equally important. That’s why this isn’t a little dog down at our feet. Like in ‘Virtual Reality,’ the dog is as important as Evangeline. Of course, now the Blue Dog has become something else. It’s not the rougarou ultimately, even though George originally painted it that way. It became something all its own.
“So, in looking at this particular painting, at 'Virtual Reality'—George was very intent on his technique and his compositions being symbolic in some way of the message he was trying to get across. In this case, he was trying to preserve the Cajuns, right? He was trying to tell a story of their journey. ‘Virtual Reality’ is a very surrealistic and contemporary interpretation. There wasn’t even such a thing as ‘virtual reality’ when he painted this. George would always say that his paintings—all of his paintings—were all about contrast. So, you’re contrasting, for example, the hard edges of the trees and of the figures—whether it is the dogs or Evangeline or the candlesticks—with this very loose impressionistic, painterly interior of those same items, or of the bushes or of the land. Then there is the contrast, obviously, of the light versus dark. And the contrast of this mythic romantic history of Evangeline with the more contemporary interpretation of the Blue Dog, also grown out of a myth, from the rougarou. Intertwining these two, it really only makes sense that they would meet up in this surreal, imaginary world of George’s creation.”