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.