George Rodrigue saw his first silkscreens in 1966 as an art student at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, when Andy Warhol caused a sensation with his prints of Celebrity Portraits and Campbell’s Soup Cans. It wasn’t until 1975, however, that Rodrigue tried his own hand at silkscreening … a reproduction of his painting Jolie Blonde. Unhappy with the way the painting appeared in silkscreen form, he focused on lithograph reproductions of his Cajun works instead.

In 1990 Rodrigue experimented with silkscreening again. Although he clung to the blending and complexity of his early works within his original paintings, silkscreens reflected his affinity for a hard-edged, strong design and bands of bright, uniform color. This time, however, he embraced the possibilities of silkscreening as an art form which is just as original as paint on canvas. He approached the prints as artworks special unto themselves, rather than as copies of paintings.

Rodrigue creates silkscreens by making a separate drawing on tracing paper for every color within the print. The different shades of blue in the dog alone, for example, can include as many as eight separate drawings. Although in numbered editions, the silkscreens are not copies of each other or of paintings.On those rare occasions when he does adapt a silkscreen from a painting, Rodrigue creates all new drawings and reduces or alters the colors, avoiding any indication of brushstroke or ‘painterliness.’ In silkscreening, as with painting, he embraces the medium itself and treats both as unique and original forms of art.