Designed 2013/Printed 2016
Numbered Edition of 90, including the Rodrigue Estate Stamp
21×38 inches
J.D. Liebert, who has managed Rodrigue’s Warehouse for ten years, holds the print, showing scale.
Paradise Island is a new original silkscreen on heavy paper designed by George Rodrigue in 2013. The file was found within a ‘TO DO’ folder on his computer containing a dozen or so unrealized completed artworks —- all designs for original silkscreens or works on metal.
In this case, Rodrigue composed the print like a collage, combining photography with his Blue Dogs, using a photograph he took in 1997 while in Fiji on his honeymoon. He “posterized” the image, contributing to the artwork’s distinctive overall look…..similar to an old island postcard.
Per George’s instructions, and in the manner in which he produced the majority of his silkscreens for years, this special edition is small, with only 90 prints in the run.
The following is an excerpt from the book, George Rodrigue: Prints (Harry N. Abrams, 2008), where Rodrigue explains his process in relation to a series of works based on the Rocky Mountains:
“Photography has been a part of my creative process for a long time. As I look back over the last forty years, I realize that I have worked basically the same way the entire time. For my early Cajun paintings I photographed models, then used my photographs as sources, ‘arranging’ the images within them in different ways in order to best portray whatever folktale was my subject.
In these four silkscreen prints, all created in 2007, I’ve used the camera in a similar fashion. First, I went to the Rocky Mountains and made hundreds of photographs of the sky and landscape during each of the four seasons. After studying and playing with these images for a year or so, I was ready to make silkscreen prints that incorporated the Blue Dog shape.
I fused the two images together in a way that showed the Blue Dog emerging from and yet belonging within the mountains and trees. The Blue Dog becomes a part of nature, with the landscape revealing itself through the dog’s shape.
With today’s technology, the computer has given me hundreds of variations with which to work—in an almost collage-type construction. These are the first four silkscreen editions I made using this new process.”