Artist George Rodrigue never lost his love for New Iberia

The inaugural year is almost at an end for the permanent exhibit of the late artist George Rodrique’s Carmel studio recreated in a corner of the Bayou Teche Museum. Earlier this year, Rodrigue’s “Shiny Blue Dog” exhibit hung in the museum. That collection was inspired by the work he did to brighten children’s hospital wings. Reading the label near the exhibit brought new understanding to the famed Blue Dog on shiny metal, an icon that rose to international popularity.

An artist, like a prophet, often goes without honor in their own hometown perhaps because they are not understood. A visit last spring to New Orleans for the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts Scholarship and Award Luncheon, followed by a personal tour with Wendy Rodrigue at the opening of a new exhibit at the Royal Street Rodrigue Gallery, brought his passion for New Iberia to life for this writer.

Rodrigue Background

George Rodrigue was born on Main Street and grew up on St. Peter Street. His love for New Iberia, the city where he learned how to paint, remained in his heart always. The New Orleans gallery opened in 1989 and moved to the current location across the street in 2009. It is one of three galleries maintained by the artist’s heirs — others are in Carmel, California, and Lafayette. But it was New Iberia where his heirs decided to build a legacy by donating his Carmel studio and last unfinished painting which remains on permanent display.

In an interview once in his Carmel studio, Rodrigue was asked if now that he lived in California would he be painting the vegetation and trees of his new environment. According to his wife, Rodrigue said, “Why would I do that, my landscapes are in here,” as he pointed to his heart.

“No mater where he was or what he was painting, he was painting Louisiana,” Wendy Rodrigue said. “He wanted to be buried with his parents in New Iberia.”

His widow, Wendy Wolfe Rodrigue, began working for Rodrigue in 1990. They started dating in 1993 and were married in 1997. She began working for him before she had the nerve to talk to him, she said.

“I don’t get nervous around movie stars but I get nervous around artists,” Wendy Rodrigue said. “I miss George terribly. I refused to be a footnote in someone else’s life, but I told George I was happy to be his footnote. I am defined by George and I love that.”

Recognition of Rodrigue’s Artwork

The late George Rodrigue has been acclaimed for his artwork worldwide, including one of the many books featuring Rodrigue’s paintings. “The Cajuns of George Rodrigue,” (1976) was the first book published nationally on the Cajun culture and the first bilingual American book printed.

The book caught the eye of the Director of the National Endowment for the Arts who showed it to First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Mrs. Carter chose the book as an official White House Gift of State during President Carter’s administration. The Cajuns of George Rodrigue also made the Top 10 Best Southern Book List of 1976.

As part of the spring 2017 show in the New Orleans gallery was the first class painting by Rodrigue. He captured the 1924 school class from Mt. Carmel Academy including his mother, Marie Courregé Rodrigue. It is one of his most famous paintings worldwide, Wendy Rodrigue said.

“This painting is so important. He sent it with a friend, a French artist, rolled up in a tube. His friend had stood in line for years to get his own paintings into Le Salon in Paris during their legendary annual exhibition — a rare honor for an American,” Wendy Rodrigue explained. “Established in the mid-17th Century in Paris, everybody famous showed there. Monet, Picasso, you name them they were accepted.”

Rodrigue’s friend was never accepted at the exclusive art exhibit, but he stood in line with his own painting and one of Rodrigue’s, which was accepted.

“Not only that, George was the first American to be accepted into Societ des Artistes Francais in over 100 years,” Wendy Rodrigue said. “John Singer Sargent was awarded an honorable mention, George won an honorable mention. They only gave out five awards for the 4,000 artists exhibited. First, second, third and two honorable mentions, one to George. It was the biggest honor of his life.”

And it was of his mother’s class at Mt. Carmel Academy. Wendy Rodrigue said it meant everything to him. His selection for the exhibit shocked the art world and the French newspaper Le Figaro wrote, “No American has ever painted with such quiety mastery (as Sargent) and one hundred years later of Rodrigue, ‘America’s Rousseau.’ ”

The next year Rodrigue was automatically able to hang any picture and he chose the Jolie Blonde portrait.

Understanding Typical Rodrigue

Starting the tour of “Rodrigue’s Women,” Wendy Rodrigue started with her husband’s painting of his mother’s class at Mount Carmel. She pointed out that the heads never touch the sky, a common occurrence in Rodrigue’s Cajun series of paintings and the live oak is typical.

When Rodrigue was in art school, he would drive back from “big sky” Texas and after crossing the Sabine River coming home to New Iberia, he noticed how suddenly the skies are small because of the massive oak trees.

He went to galleries throughout the south and looked at the renditions of famous painters that had painted Louisiana. He noticed how they had very European views, a bird’s eye view, with big skies. Rodrigue said about those works, “that’s not Louisiana,” so he decided to graphically portray Louisiana, Wendy Rodrigue said.

Rodrigue often started his paintings by taking photographs.

“He took thousands of photographs of trees — we’ll have to do an exhibition one day,” Wendy Rodrigue said. “When he was in California he realized how uniquely different Louisiana is and he really wanted to capture what he thought was going away. He wanted to save it on canvas.”

Instead of painting the whole tree, he got underneath the trees cutting off the tops. He added symbolism by saying the light in the distance was a sign of hope for the Acadian people to find a home in the swamps after being kicked out of their homes in Canada.

“He went further to say, the people were cut out of their homes in Canada and pasted as a unit onto Louisiana, and that’s why they are locked in,” Wendy Rodrigue said. “If you look at a Rodrigue painting, you can’t take one element and move it without ruining the whole painting. They are locked and trapped by the landscape. If this were done by the rule of art, the people would be in shadow because they are underneath a tree. But George said, ‘No,’ because they glow, from the inside. Because of their culture, they glow from the inside out.”

Wendy Rodrigue said Rodrigue came up with this in his 20s and lived with it all his life. The same strong, emphasis and symbolism goes through his collections, design, shape and color, you really can’t put him in a category. He is a blend of surrealism, pop, primitivism and folk art. Her own word for him is a modernist in a class with Vincent Van Gogh and French artist Henri Matisse.

“Louisiana loves to claim him as their own, and I think that is beautiful, but it’s much bigger than that,” Wendy Rodrigue said. “He is a great, important, beloved American modernist. It is my goal in life to make people understand that.”

Rodrigue Method

Studying his subject first by photograph, Rodrigue often took the small photographic compositions and projected them onto the canvas to get an initial outline. Then he designed the landscape around them so the figures or subjects were “locked in” to their surroundings.

“Then he added certain things, often flags, because he wanted to emphasis how proud the Cajuns were to be American’s, to belong to this country,” Wendy Rodrigue said. “It was really important to him and he did it a lot.”

She said all the things about his paintings applies to all his paintings. Even the negative space was an opportunity to paint intentionally.

“The shapes between the branches were just as important to George as the tree and the people. It’s really about shape. He saw shape, design and color. Above all else he was an abstract painter,” Wendy Rodrigue said.

What About Blue Dog?

As he did for 25 years about the Cajun people — he was painting about the past — but in the Blue Dog series, which he painted for 25 years, he was commenting on today and looking into the future, Wendy Rodrigue said.

When The Shiny Blue Dog was presented in a 2008 New Orleans Museum of Art retrospective, Wendy Rodrigue saw that it was the children who could really see the meaning in art.

“I would tour thousands of people through the day. There was a school class of kindergarten and first graders in the garden and one of the students grabbed my hand and pulled me underneath the tree nearby,” Wendy Rodrigue said. “They said, look Ms. Wendy, the light shines through the trees just like in his paintings.”

Those little children are the reason Wendy Rodrigue and the legacy of the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts has become so important to the family. It is his legacy to see other creatively gifted children come into contact with their God given talents and fully embrace their own world of art.

“I don’t have to be here (in New Orleans), but I feel a responsibility to share what I know,” Wendy Rodrigue said. “We have three galleries, Carmel, New Orleans and Lafayette. He has amazing beach pieces. When we first bought our house in Carmel Valley, 18 acres, he built the only studio he ever had for himself.”

Seeing the Saga

The Bayou Teche Museum has become the full time curator for “The Saga of the Acadians,” at first on loan from the Gauthier family of New Orleans. The Saga will be a rotating exhibit up only until the end of December making room for a new exhibition to be introduced for the annual fund raising Gala Jan. 25, 2018.

The Rodrigue Carmel studio exhibit will be permanent with plans for expansion once the Voorhies Wing is renovated. New Iberians can look forward to the George Rodrigue park thanks to the Landrys, Rodrigues, city of New Iberia and the museum board.

His legacy doesn’t stop there. Epiphany Day School is one of the Louisiana A+ Schools, a graduate of the artistry style of teaching for students to find ways of expanding their learning thanks in part to the Rodrigue art foundation.

George Rodrigue never stopped loving his hometown and now his beloved New Iberia have provided a permanent legacy for the man who learned to paint in south Louisiana taking the Cajuns and his Blue Dog around the world.

You May Not Know

Wendy Rodrigue said there have been misunderstandings printed about her husband’s “long battle with cancer,” when in fact, it was a short time.

“George was diagnosed the end of May 2012 and went into full remission in August 2012. He had a rare condition in his lung that would allow him to respond well to a certain drug but in late spring, June 2013, another spot was found,” Wendy Rodrigue said.

“He was doing better that fall and a tour was planned. But things were not going well for George. Instead June 31, 2013 the cancer had gone into his spinal column and into his brain. We went immediately to M.D. Anderson. Later he contracted pneumonia and within three hours was gone. It was a complete shock.” Wendy Rodrigue remembered through tears.

Before Rodrigue died, he insisted his wife convert her online blog, “Musings of an artist’s wife,” into a compilation of stories published as, “The Other Side of the Painting.”

“She’s the other side of my hit record,” Wendy Rodrigue said her famous husband would joke. In the book, Wendy reveals for the first time in print the personal history behind Rodrigue’s art and the many adventures they shared together. It is available at Books Along the Teche.