Description
George Rodrigue held a lifetime interest in the American West. He had fond memories of long drives between Louisiana and California while attending art school in Los Angeles. Early in his career he made frequent trips through Texas, selling paintings from the trunk of his car. After opening a studio and buying a home in Carmel, CA, he made that drive more often, embracing the journey even more than the destination. He looked forward to those annual pilgrimages to small, out of the way places through West Texas and New Mexico, often making purchases of interesting pieces that later found their way into his art, such as the beaded cow skull featured in his silkscreen editions, Cow Dogs.
In Cow Dogs, Rodrigue incorporates the cow skull flanked by two Blue Dogs, reaffirming his love of symmetry as well as color, in this one composition.
“It seems like every artist throughout time interprets the heads or skulls of horses or cows…. It’s a traditional fascination within art, inspiring creative interpretations, connecting man with animal. In the end, each artist puts his own indelible mark on basically the same subject matter. In this case I adapted a South American folk art beaded skull interpretation into my own design, connecting the cow’s skull not only to the American West, but also to Mesoamerican cultures, and through the Blue Dog and its loup-garou origins, the Cajuns.”
Learn more from Wendy Rodrigue at Musings of an Artist’s Wife for the Life & Legacy Foundation.
*Price and availability subject to change without notice
All prints sold directly by the Rodrigue Estate are also accompanied with a certificate of authenticity indicating the number of the print purchased from the estate.
