Thursday, December 28, 2017

[Swamp '70] George Rodrigue paintings

The paintings of George Rodrigue (1944-2013), depicting life in rural Louisiana have an eerie, haunting quality to them... Definitely inspiring. Check out the site of Wendy Rodrigue (the artist's wife), it has background info on several paintings.

Aioli Dinner (1971)

Doc Moses, Cajun Traiteur (1974)

"A traiteur is a Cajun folk doctor with a special, inherited gift for healing one ailment. In George’s painting, Doc Moses heals earaches. He pours a ring of salt around the patient and touches his ears. Amazingly, only the healer must believe. The patient’s skepticism does not affect the cure." (source)

The Cajun Bride of Oak Alley (1974)

"In 1850, on the occasion of the simultaneous weddings of his two daughters, Durand’s slaves decorated the arboreal alley in a manner befitting his most eccentric nature. Prolific web-spinning spiders were brought in (some say from the nearby Atchafalaya Basin, others say from as far away as China) and were released in the trees to go about their arachnidan business. Then slaves went to their task of coating the dewy, billowing webs with gold and silver dust blown from bellows. And under this splendidly shimmering canopy proceeded the ethereal promenade of the wedding party and its two thousand guests." (source)

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