BUSH’S BRUSHSTROKES George W. Bush’s Presidential Center located on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas has just unveiled an exhibit of 30 oil-on-board paintings that the former president has made since taking up the pastime in 2012 under the tutelage of noted Dallas painter Gail Norfleet. The paintings based on photographs are all of various world leaders he interacted with during his two terms in office people like Vladimir Putin Hamid Karzai Angela Merkel and the Dalai Lama.
For people who only know about Mr. Bush through the smudged lens of the media as an intellectually incurious swaggering cowboy the news of his artistic talent likely comes as something of a shock. But for those who know a bit more about the man — that for example he read voraciously on a wide range of subjects during his years in the White House devouring scores of books each year — his having taken up the brush and palette might not be quite as surprising.
What I found to be even more revelatory than the fact of Bush’s new avocation was a New York Times piece by Roberta Smith reviewing the exhibit and what it says about what she calls Mr. Bush’s “unsettling talent.” She writes: “His skill may be disconcerting for people who love painting and dislike the former president but still everyone needs to get a grip especially those in the art world who dismiss the paintings without even seeing them.”
What a strange statement to make when analyzed objectively. Ought his skill which Ms. Smith describes as that of a “decent amateur” really need be “disconcerting” simply because someone dislikes even loathes the president’s policies politics and personality? And how is the fact that someone “loves painting” relevant as if that would understandably cause one to take offense at the very fact that the former president has dared to show a flair for that which one loves?
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