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.”
The Bayou Collection by George Rodrigue (1944-2013) is on view at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, Mississippi (August 10, 2026–January 9, 2027). Organized by the LSU Museum of Art, the exhibition presents all forty of the collection’s original paintings created between 1981 and 1984 for […]
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.
Twenty years ago, the Superdome reopened. The Saints met the Falcons, and New Orleans came home.
After Katrina, George Rodrigue put the Blue Dog to work for the city. He called the prints Blue Dog Relief: We Will Rise Again, You Can’t Drown the Blues, Throw Me Something F.E.M.A., and We Are Marching Again. In 2007 he painted Drew Brees with the Blue Dog, with proceeds for hurricane relief. Together they raised $1.5 million for the Southeast Louisiana Red Cross, the United Way, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Brees Dream Foundation and smaller groups across the Gulf Coast.
Those years led to the night every Saints fan had waited on. In 2010 the Saints won the Super Bowl. For George, a Louisiana man and an avid sports fan, it was the dream fulfilled. We Blues Dem Away (Ain’t Dat Super) was the last piece he made celebrating the Saints, and he marked it the way he marked home: with the Blue Dog, his pure Louisiana image.
Tonight we remember how far we have come and remember the Domecoming.
WE BLUES DEM AWAY (AIN’T DAT SUPER), 2010
Original silkscreen by George Rodrigue
35 x 28 inches
Available at Rodrigue Studios and online at Link Tree in bio ⬆️
Who Dat.
Discover the original painting, “High Noon” a striking piece by George Rodrigue from when he was I. Art school in 1964 (private collection). This 12 x 12-inch watercolor on illustration board 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]
Throwback Thursday: April 3, 2004, at the Pensacola Museum of Art. George Rodrigue walks a school group through Watch Dog during Cajuns, Blue Dogs and Hurricanes — the 1983 loup-garou that became the first Blue Dog.
He painted it for the story “Slaughter House” in the book Bayou, using photographs of his late studio dog Tiffany. Meant to be fearsome, the dog came out frontal, curious, and strangely approachable. That single canvas is where the Blue Dog series begins.
Watch Dog is on view now with all forty paintings of The Bayou Collection at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art ( @wamamuseum ) in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, through January 9, 2027 — shown alongside the work of Walter Anderson, another Gulf South visionary.
#GeorgeRodrigue #WatchDog #BlueDog #BayouCollection #WalterAndersonMuseum
Via @wamamuseum “The car came to a halt at a place where marble slabs marked the graves. The music was louder when the door was opened. She stepped out into the moon-light.
He was so startled that he contorted his face to widen his eyes. She wore a flowing skirt and blouse of some spiderweb fabric, translucent from the car to the flat, marble slabs. Her hair was red, bright red in the moonlight, striking.
He gulped the whiskey in his throat so that some spilled out of the corners of his mouth and he had to wipe his chin with his arm as his eyes never blinked. She danced.
Alone, shimmering white and red among the moonlight-blazing tombs and night-dark tree shadow, she danced.
She Charlestoned, Fox-Trotted, Big-Appled, Polka-ed and Waltzed. The four slabs of marble were ablaze with the flame of her tossing, wide-spun, flaring hair.” -
Excerpt from “Bayou” by Chris Segura
Come see this painting and the rest of “The Bayou Collection by George Rodrigue,” a remarkable exhibition of 40 paintings created between 1981 and 1984 and inspired by Cajun folklore and ghost stories. Organized by the LSU Museum of Art, the collection explores the mystery, legends, and cultural spirit of Louisiana’s bayous through Rodrigue’s distinctive visual storytelling.
George Rodrigue, “My Yellow Rolls,” 1981-1984. Oil on canvas. Private Collection, George Godfrey Rodrigue, Jr.
Family Trust.
Discover the original painting, “Missing My Master” a striking piece by George Rodrigue from 1991 (private collection). This 24 x 20-inch oil on linen 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]
New Rodrigue Estate Release!
This newly released estate edition is based on Rodrigue’s 1994 painting Gettin’ Back to Nature. In the Cajun paintings of the 1970s and 1980s, Rodrigue set figures into the Louisiana landscape as if they had been cut out and pasted there—flat, frontal, and locked against dark oaks and a compressed sky. That device was meant to picture Acadian history: families who left France for Nova Scotia, were expelled in the Grand Dérangement, and finally settled under the oaks of south Louisiana. He used the same principle for the Blue Dog.
Here the dog fills the height of the picture and sits off-center, while the oak’s branches divide the blue sky into distinct shapes. Placing the Blue Dog in that Acadiana setting draws a line from the earlier Cajun figures through the Blue Dog series of the 1990s.
Gettin’ Back to Nature
1994/2026
Silkscreen on paper
12 x 16 inches (image)
Edition of 175
Available at Rodrigue Studios and online at Link in Bio ⬆️
Two Gulf South visionaries, one conversation.
George Rodrigue’s complete Bayou Collection—all forty paintings made between 1981 and 1984 for the book Bayou—is on view at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art @wamamuseum in Ocean Springs through January 9, 2027.
The essay now on the studio site looks at what happens when Rodrigue’s dark, oak-framed Cajun folklore sits beside Walter Anderson’s luminous, observational Mississippi coast. Same Gulf South. Different languages. Both insisting that this landscape and its stories belong in the American canon.
Among the forty works is Watch Dog (1983)—the loup-garou that became the first Blue Dog.
Read the full essay at Link Tree in bio ⬆️
Discover the original painting, “My Favorite Part of Town” a striking piece by George Rodrigue from 1991 (private collection). This 30 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]
