George Rodrigue Comes Home

A familiar (and famous) name returns home, in spirit at least, when an exhibit of works by New Iberia's native son arrives at the Bayou Teche Museum. The work of George Rodrigue, the late Louisiana artist made world-famous during his life by his Blue Dog paintings, was controversial—people either loved his work, or they hated it. The controversy didn't begin with the Blue Dog either, which originally found its way into his work as a representation of the Cajun werewolf, or loup garou, and was modeled after a family dog.

In fact, strong reactions were elicited first by the landscapes of South Louisiana that Rodrigue painted in his early years. The canvases were populated with oak trees dripping with Spanish moss and painted from a vantage point unique to the landscape genre: a position under the oaks' thick canopies. From this shaded perspective, the paintings were almost uniformly cast with shadows and murky light. In an entry in her online blog, Musings of an Artist's Wife, Wendy Rodrigue wrote, "George was unprepared for the negative hometown reaction to his landscapes. Most locals entered his gallery on Duclos Street (and later Pinhook Road … ) in Lafayette, Louisiana with skepticism. Why are your paintings so dark? Everything looks the same. Can’t you paint anything else?"

He did paint "something else," exploring various during his lifetime. But Rodrigue was from New Iberia, and the oak trees of this seminal landscape were always a prominent component in his work, especially in his series of Cajun paintings filled with people enjoying the typical pastimes of South Louisiana families.

It follows, then, that this exhibition would focus not so much on the Blue Dog, but on those reliably representational trees that always feature in the background. Every painting in the exhibit, entitled George Rodrigue Comes Home: Under Iberia's Oak Trees, will have an oak in it. The exhibit will feature about a dozen paintings, many never seen in public before. bayoutechemuseum.org.