1944-2013. Born and raised in southwest Louisiana, “Cajun Country,” George Rodrigue preserved on his canvas what he feared was his dying heritage — including its land, people, traditions and mythology. It was a Cajun legend, the loup-garou, that spawned his most famous series,
2026 Emmy® Award Winner BLUE: The Life and Art of George Rodrigue is airing on public TV stations and streaming exclusively via PBS Passport. Presented by WLAE New Orleans and distributed by American Public Television.
“I grew up feeling a strong relationship to the old things, to the old culture, and I got a stronger feeling when I went to Los Angeles to school. I really started to understand how different I was and how different my Louisiana was.”
George Rodrigue’s Blue Dog is one of the most recognizable images in the world of contemporary art. The 2027 Blue Dog Wall Calendar features twelve images that will appeal to both longtime and new fans and collectors. Steeped in the legends and Cajun myths of Rodrigue’s Louisiana upbringing, Blue […]
I’ve always approached painting knowing that my job is not to make an accurate representation of a subject–
IT’S GOT TO TRANSCEND THAT.
We remember.
Twenty-five years ago tonight, George Rodrigue sat in shock like so many Americans, then turned to his easel. By 5 a.m. on September 12, 2001, he had finished God Bless America—the Blue Dog drained of its color, yellow eyes turned red with grief, the flag behind it.
Prints of that painting raised $500,000 for the American Red Cross. It was how George knew to help.
In his own words, written that morning:
“On the night of September 11, 2001, like Americans everywhere, I sat in shock over the events of the day. As I’ve done many times in my life, I turned to my easel and paints for comfort.
At 5 a.m. the next morning I stared with my wife at the painting I’d just finished. As we looked from each other to the canvas, we knew that I’d made a powerful and accurate statement of our feelings. We discussed our desperation — our wanting to help in some way.
I realized as we spoke that in donating the sales from a print of this painting to the relief effort, others might be comforted as they dealt with their own grief and desire to help. Created in the depths of my personal sadness, the painting reflects the feelings of many, many people.
I first thought to paint the dog black, as if in mourning. Instead I painted it without color at all, the blue joy drained by shock and grief. (Some people have commented that the lack of color reminds them of the television footage of debris-covered people running on the streets of New York City.) For many years the dog has had yellow, happy eyes. On this day, however, the eyes are red, indicating a heavy heart.
I am proud to be from the United States of America. It is our spirit, strong in the symbol of our flag, which will mend our broken hearts and allow us to use these events to strengthen our courage and compassion.”
— George Rodrigue, September 12, 2001
We honor the nearly 3,000 lives lost, the first responders, and all who still carry that day. May remembrance meet us with the courage and compassion George hoped this painting would help restore.
#NeverForget #September11 #GodBlessAmerica #GeorgeRodrigue
On the eve of a solemn anniversary, this CBS Sunday Morning conversation from George Rodrigue’s 2008 New Orleans Museum of Art retrospective still lands with quiet force.
Standing with the painting he made on September 11, 2001—God Bless America—Rodrigue said:
“This is what says America has got destroyed. America has got attacked and we are all sad about it. All of the color has dropped out of me. I have no color left.”
He painted the Blue Dog without its familiar blue. The eyes turned red. The color, he said, had gone out of him—and out of the country. Then he did what he always did: he put the work to use. Prints of that image raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Red Cross in the days that followed.
Twenty-five years later now, the painting is a record of grief, and of the instinct to answer grief with something useful.
TBT #GeorgeRodrigue #BlueDog #GodBlessAmerica #NeverForget #CBSSundayMorning
The spiral motif that appears in Before the Hour of Dawn Approaches, a blue dog landscape painting, connects to George Rodrigue’s early depictions of Cajuns and the Louisiana landscape. In those early paintings, Rodrigue balanced his use of dark colors to represent the oak-tree-dominant South Louisiana landscape with lighter shades of blue and white, often in the distance, meant to represent the hope newly arrived Cajuns had for their future in Louisiana.
Occasionally, Rodrigue painted those lighter colors as a swirl or spiral in his work. This motif appears in paintings Rodrigue created throughout his career, most notably, the series of swirling round paintings created in the early 2000s meant to capture the energy of hurricanes. In Before the Hour of Dawn Approaches, Rodrigue paints the spiral in shades of pink and purple—colors that might appear in the sky just before sunrise—with the spiral adding to the painting’s impressionistic rendering of the landscape.
Before The Hour of Dawn Approaches
1992
Oil on linen
11 x 14 inches
Newly available and on display at Rodrigue Studios New Orleans.
Inquiries: [email protected]
Happy Labor Day from Rodrigue Studios! 🇺🇸
Pictured: We Stand Beside Her, 2001, Original Silkscreen by George Rodrigue, 27x20 inches, Edition of 150.
This iconic Blue Dog, paired with stars and stripes, embodies American unity and resilience, themes often explored in both Rodrigue’s Cajun and Blue Dog works.
In 2003, George Rodrigue painted LSU’s Mike the Tiger reclining in one of the artist’s signature Louisiana landscapes. Prints of the image originally raised more than $1 million toward the tiger’s world-class habitat on the LSU campus.
Good luck to the Tigers tonight as a new era begins in Tiger Stadium. #GeauxTigers
Available at Rodrigue Studios and online at link in Bio ⬆️
Discover “The Yellow Team” a striking piece by George Rodrigue from 1985 (private collection). This 34 x 24-inch oil on canvas is our featured Catalogue Raisonné work of the week.
If you own a unique George Rodrigue artwork, the Rodrigue family invites you to share details for inclusion in the comprehensive catalogue raisonné documenting his life’s work.
For submission guidelines and more information, visit https://georgerodrigue.com/catalogue-raisonne/ or reach out at [email protected]
#TBT as LSU football season gets underway this weekend. 💜💛
Pictured: George Rodrigue in 2011 with his painting A Number One Tiger Fan, created in partnership with the LSU Museum of Art in conjunction with its Rodrigue retrospective that year.
Fifteen years later, the painting is once again on display at the @lsumoa .
Prints of A Number One Tiger Fan originally benefited arts education, and the image continues to support nonprofits today through the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts’ Print Donation Program.
Learn more about the @rodriguefoundation print and program at www.rodriguefoundation.org
#GeorgeRodrigue #LSU #BlueDog #TBT LouisianaArt
From his earliest depictions of the Louisiana landscape, George Rodrigue took a specific approach to composition. He painted each element in his works as if it could only fit in one place on the canvas, like a puzzle piece. Moving one element would disrupt the visual flow of the entire painting. The resulting works are compositionally strong paintings like Sister-In-Law where Rodrigue anchors two blue dogs against a color-blocked background.
Rodrigue added a series of pink flowers across the upper half of the painting, evoking the blue dog’s visual connections to pop art and adding dimension to the painting’s hard-edge composition. The flowers also speak to the artist’s new working environment. Rodrigue painted Sister-In-Law a year after he purchased a home in Carmel, California and the same year that he finished building out a dedicated artist studio on the property. The roses, hollyhocks, and hummingbird flowers that bloomed just outside that studio helped to inspire the depictions of flowers in Rodrigue’s paintings.
Sister-In-Law
2001
Acrylic on linen
20 x 16 inches
Available and on display at Rodrigue Studios New Orleans
Inquiries: [email protected]
