George Rodrigue — Blue Dog and the Cajun Modern

George Rodrigue was a Cajun kid from New Iberia who painted the Louisiana landscape in dark, oak-heavy oils for twenty years — then, in 1984, he painted a blue ghost dog based on a loup-garou legend his mother told him, and the Blue Dog became one of the most recognized American images of the 1990s. His gallery on Royal Street still anchors the Warehouse District art scene. The dog never looks happy. That's the point.