George Rodrigue
George Rodrigue is a Louisiana-based artist who began painting dark
brooding family gatherings under black, spanish moss-laden oak trees in an
area of Southwestern Louisiana known as Acadiana. This area of
the Bayou State is home of the French-speaking Acadians or "Cajuns". With
a Magritte-like "it is what it is" flourish, Rodrigue has included a
painting from his earlier style in the upper-left corner of the image
below.
Rodrigue's style has changed in recent years - a well-known stylistic
motif in much of his recent work is a small, white-nosed blue dog named Tiffany
with a puzzled look in her piercing yellow eyes. Tiffany has lent a brand-name
recognition to Rodrigue's work, and has fueled some of his
spectacular commercial success. Rodrigue's gallery in the French Quarter of New Orleans
does land-office business, and he's created the
"Absolut Rodrigue" vodka
advertisement pictured below, which ran in several national magazines.
Tiffany is a smart pup - she can bark the answers to arithmetic expressions.
Go ahead, click here to see for yerself! Just don't
ask her to divide by zero...
Visit Galerie Blue
Dog, Rodrigue's West Coast outlet to see more images of the Tiffany
the Blue Dog. There's also a photographe of the artist with dog.
More of Rodrigue's work can be seen in a coffee-table art book called
Blue Dog. A video documentary featuring
by Whoopie Goldberg as the voice of Tiffany is also available.
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