George Rodrigue's Blue Dog: "The blue dog is New Orleans"

Probably most of us have seen a picture somewhere of George Rodrigue's Blue Dog.  If you were like me, however, you did not know who George Rodrigue was, or how he came to paint the Blue Dog paintings.  The 8 foot version of the 3-sided sculpture Rodrigue finally figured out how to create in 2003 stands in the outdoor sculpture garden at New Orleans City Park.  A larger version is on Veterans Boulevard.

Rodrigue originally painted the bluish-grey dog for a book of Cajun ghost stories.  His 1984 painting of the first "Blue Dog" used Rodrigue's former dog, Tiffany, as the model for the outline of the dog's shape.  The painting, named Watchdog, became the first in a series of evolving blue dogs.

Rodrigue's wife, Wendy, on her blog Musings of an Artist's Wife, wrote that the evolution of the blue dog was:

...not some overnight epiphany...metamorphosis was slow.

I think that is true of so many of our best ideas and visions--it evolves as we evolve in our understanding and purpose.

Somehow, the 3-sided sculpture he envisioned, but had not fully developed how to carry out until 2003, seems to best represent that evolution and 'metamorphosis' in the most parallel manner.  See more of Rodrigue's work at his studio site.