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The West Baton Rouge Museum opened an exhibit honoring the work of George Rodrigue June 17. The show will run until October 29, 2023. Rodrigue is a Louisiana-born artist most known for Louisiana landscapes and the Blue Dog. His wife, Wendy Rodrigue, presented during the museum’s Historical Happy Hour representing the artist ten years after his death (2013). Landscapes in the show span from work completed in his twenties up to pieces painted in his mid-sixties. Many of the show’s 35 pieces include the iconic Blue Dog. The featured artist grew up in New Iberia, Louisiana. The land of his home state continued to influence his work throughout this life. Pieces from the 1960s to the early 2000s displayed in the galleries show a lifetime of landscape paintings. “It was in the third grade George discovered art,” says Wendy Rodrigue. George Rodrigue was stricken by polio and confined to his bed for most of that year. His mother, despite being frugal, purchased a paint by numbers kit for her sick boy. As the story goes, young George Rodrigue flipped to the blank side and painted a clown. The artist kept the clown painting in his studio until his death, says Wendy Rodrigue. George Rodrigue’s father was a bricklayer by trade and supported his only son and wife. “George’s daddy made George promise that he would never pick up a brick— never.” Per Wendy Rodrigue, a family savings provided an education for George Rodrigue’s art school. The artist began formal art education at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL), now the University of Lafayette. He was accepted to the Art Center College of Design in California. Rodrigue moved there in the 1960s. George Rodrigue returned to Louisiana when his father died before the completion of his degree in Los Angeles. He worked for one year in advertising, said Wendy Rodrigue, before becoming a full time artist. While most of his close colleagues from art school went to New York, George chose to stay in Louisiana and sold his art from home. “He put a little ad in the back of Southern Living Magazine: ‘Bayou Country Paintings’,” Wendy Rodrigue told the West Side Journal. In the ad, he listed his home address for interested parties to purchase art. Later, he opened his own gallery. In her book “The Other Side of the Painting,” Wendy Rodrigue describes his early career, “George sold his art himself, either on the road from the trunk of his car or from his gallery in Lafayette.” The Rodrigue Foundation was established with George Rodrigue in 2009. Their efforts focused outreach to school-aged children through hands on activities with George and Wendy Rodrigue. When George Rodrigue died, the foundation eliminated hands on active programing in favor of scholarships and providing schools with art supplies. Wendy Rodrigue developed The Life and Legacy Foundation after George Rodrigue’s death to continue the hands on learning she had began with her late husband. It is the same foundation that brought the original works to The West Baton Rouge Museum and presented to the children’s summer camp. The Life and Legacy Foundation has been to over 137 schools in 8 states presenting on art and the works of George Rodrigue since inception. Wendy Rodrigue says the efforts of this foundation are, “A wild and wonderful, art-filled, joyous ride.” Wendy Rodrigue will continue to meet with groups of children as the exhibit continues through the fall. Over the first weekend, she talked to multiple groups from kindergarten age to sixth grade about the art and life of George Rodrigue to whom she had been married since 1997. “The West Baton Rouge Museum is my first return to museum exhibitions since 2018 and I’m so grateful to them for taking a chance on me,” Wendy Rodrigue said. “As a result of the chance they took on me and the real work they’ve put into this and the real efforts they’ve given this, four other museums have picked up this show[…]. The West Baton Rouge Museum made that possible.”