Three Best Friends (Cajun Graces)
1974 by George Rodrigue
Oil on canvas
36×24 inches
When Rodrigue first incorporated people into his paintings, their presence had little impact on his treatment of the Louisiana landscape. The figures became a compositional element of the overall painting, as with the oak tree, land, and sky. They are painted as structural forms, balanced, yet in contrast to the dark blackness of the oak trees.
Here, Rodrigue again incorporates three Cajun women— a blonde, a brunette and a redhead. They are dressed in all-white, accentuating the dramatic, mysterious and haunting circumstances of the Cajun — pure and unaffected by modern life, painted as ghosts immune from time.