An interview with George Rodrigue - October 11, 2002

I can't help but think that you're coming full circle. Didn't you study abstract painting at Art Center?

Abstract Expressionism was the art-of-the-day in Los Angeles in the 60s. Pop had already taken over the art world, but art schools tend to be 20-30 years behind on everything. My instructors didn't take Pop seriously. All of my painting classes focused on Abstract.

But you didn't like this?

Well, I did .... I just had a hard time finding my own expression within the style.

So you painted oak trees ....

When I returned to Louisiana, I combined my Abstract studies, my interest in Pop, and my Louisiana heritage to form my own style. It's kind of ironic ---- People bought the paintings because they thought they looked like very old paintings of trees. But as I painted them, I treated them like abstract shapes, while adapting the hard edge of Pop.

You just built a new studio in California. Are these new paintings the influence of California?

For the first time in my life, I have a very comfortable studio --- completely designed by me. It's changed everything. As for California ... When we first moved here, everyone asked, "Are you going to paint the dog by the Lone Cypress or in a golf scene?" I felt pretty sure that the dog would never appear in a golf scene, but I couldn't predict what would happen. I didn't paint any of the ideas people thought I would. Instead I found a new energy in the blue dog, with new concepts and new birth of color, shape, and round canvases.

Yes, but these Abstract paintings all of a sudden .... Where did they come from? Wild guess ---- Something to do with the hurricanes we were in a few weeks ago?

Yeah, the second one especially was an all-day affair. We witnessed a 100 year-old oak tree fall in our front yard. It was a Louisiana live oak covered with moss ---- the kind I've always painted. I spent seven hours with fear and uncontrolled anxiety. I hadn't been in a hurricane in 15 years, and I'd forgotten what the fury was all about. (Interviewer's Note: I, on the other hand, had known many hurricanes growing up in the Florida panhandle. This is the first one I've watched up close. I couldn't believe we weren't evacuating.) The destruction and devastation around our house and the Acadiana area was enormous.

Yeah, we packed up and left the next day and flew to California. After three days back you started painting these pictures of abstract shapes full of power and energy.

They're hurricanes.

What do you mean?

It's all about the emotional reaction on canvas of an artist. We tend to get bogged down with terms like 'figurative,' 'abstract,' and 'pop.' Historians have always labeled artists. But, art is not something that fits easily into these molds. Art is really about one man's emotions and how he (George) expresses them on canvas.

Is the Blue Dog dead for you, in the same way the Cajuns are dead?

No, not really, I just refuse to predict what I'm going to paint next.