HISTORY
Blue Dog Relief began on September 11th, 2001, when Rodrigue created God Bless America in response to the tragic events of that day. The edition of one thousand prints sold out within weeks, raising $500,000 for the American Red Cross. This experience clarified for Rodrigue how he could sell his artwork to benefit causes important to him.

Perhaps foreshadowing GRFA, Rodrigue designed Honesty in 2003, raising $350,000 for the International Child Art Foundation. With ICAF he hosted a week long workshop for children from one hundred countries and all fifty states on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Together these children of varying languages and backgrounds created a “Pyramid of Peace,” using art as the international language.

But it was following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in August 2005 that Blue Dog Relief moved to the top of Rodrigue’s priority list. With the prints We Will Rise Again, To Stay Alive We Need Levee 5, Throw Me Something F.E.M.A., We Are Marching Again, You Can’t Drown the Blues, and Drew Brees, (images below) Rodrigue raised $1.5 million for the Southeast Louisiana Chapter of the Red Cross, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the United Way, and countless smaller non-profits.

Blue Dog Relief Print Series

To date, George Rodrigue’s relief efforts, combined with the enthusiasm and generosity of his collectors, have raised $2.5 million towards helping our world. With the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts, Rodrigue embarks on a new mission to focus primarily on child development through the visual arts.

Learn how to raise funds for your charity organization with a GRFA print. click here

GEORGE RODRIGUE BIOGRAPHY
George Rodrigue (b. 1944) was born and raised in New Iberia, Louisiana, the heart of Cajun country.  Even today his work remains rooted in the familiar milieu of home.  Bed-ridden with polio, young Rodrigue discovered his love of art at age eight, when his mother gave him his first paint by number set to relieve his boredom that summer.

Later Rodrigue studied art at the University of Southwest Louisiana in Lafayette, followed by the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, where the graduate school’s curriculum provided him a nuts-and-bolts foundation in drawing and painting.

He then returned to Louisiana and developed his unique style, using the area’s visual symbols not only to capture the essence of his personal world, but also to express his spiritual and cultural ideas as they pertained to Louisiana, to the South, and to America.

Using the oak tree as his subject in hundreds of paintings in the early 1970s, Rodrigue eventually expanded his oeuvre to include the Cajun people and traditions, as well as his interpretations of myths such as Jolie Blonde and Evangeline.  It was one of these myths, the loup-garou, which inspired Rodrigue’s most famous series, the Blue Dog.

 

As a boy, Rodrigue knew of a werewolf or ghost dog that lurked in sugar cane fields, threatening to haunt bad children.  The legend said nothing about the loup-garou’s color, but Rodrigue thought the night sky would cast a blue-grey shade on its fur.  Over time the image on his canvas became friendlier, with a brighter hue and increasingly abstract settings.  No longer the loup-garou, the Blue Dog, as well as other series such as Bodies, Hurricanes, and Reflections continue to challenge Rodrigue artistically.

To learn more about George Rodrigue, visit www.georgerodrigue.com