{"id":407,"date":"2017-03-11T19:45:12","date_gmt":"2017-03-12T00:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rationalnationusa.com\/blog\/?p=407"},"modified":"2017-03-11T19:45:12","modified_gmt":"2017-03-12T00:45:12","slug":"former-president-george-w-bush-and-his-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalnationusa.com\/blog\/archives\/407","title":{"rendered":"Former President George W. Bush and His Art…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Former president George W. Bush painting. (Grant Miller\/George W. Bush Presidential Center)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Former President George W. Bush is a fair and improving amateur painter. Since leaving office he has devoted time to painting and his \u201cPortraits of Courage<\/span><\/u><\/a>\u201d\u00a0, currently No. 1 on The Washington Post bestseller list.<\/p>\n

There is another side to President Bush not often seen during his presidency. It\u00a0is a more reflective side that shows\u00a0empathy and sympathy. The qualities are present in his paintings and \u201cPortraits of Courage<\/span><\/u><\/a>\u201d\u00a0.<\/p>\n

From The Washington Post<\/a>:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

George W. Bush is getting better as a painter. It\u2019s been four years since a Romanian hacker named Marcel Lazar Lehel (a.k.a. Guccifer<\/span><\/u><\/a>) hacked into Bush family email and exposed to the world the former president\u2019s early paintings, including two self-portraits made in the bathroom. Guccifer is now in jail, but Bush is still at the easel and has released a volume of his recent work, portraits of military personnel and veterans who have served the country since Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p>\n

\u201cPortraits of Courage<\/span><\/u><\/a>,\u201d currently No. 1 on The Washington Post bestseller list, includes 66 individual portraits and a foldout reproduction of a four-panel mural. Most of the images are made from photographs, focused on the face and thickly painted with a limited but generally bright palette of colors. Highlights and shadows are strongly emphasized, and Bush lavishes particular attention on the eyes and exaggerates bone structure. A few of the paintings capture their subjects in motion \u2014 including Staff Sgt. Scott P. Lilley (who lost a part of his skull in an IED attack) holding his daughter, and Sgt. Saul Martinez (who lost both legs in Iraq) playing golf. But most of them show the head and face full size, seemingly bursting out of the frame with genuine presence and considerable expressive energy.<\/p>\n

Skip<\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s opening essay and the capsule biographies he writes about each subject are charming. He lightly ribs his mother in this account of his first experience with the paint brush: \u201cFor the first time in my sixty-six years, I picked up a paintbrush that wasn\u2019t meant for drywall. I selected tube of white paint and another labeled Burnt Umber. While I wasn\u2019t aware at the time that it was a color, I liked the name, which reminded me of Mother\u2019s cooking.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

In his descriptions of the men and women he paints, he cites their struggles with grievous war wounds, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and the myriad difficulties of reintegrating into civilian life. Although there is increasing concern in the medical community about whether we are over-diagnosing PTSD and including too many disparate psychological issues under its label, there is genuine empathy in Bush\u2019s embrace of the stories told by these soldiers.<\/p>\n

Skip<\/p>\n

Cynics will see a familiar, guy\u2019s-guy tribalism in these accounts \u2014 many key episodes in Bush\u2019s relationship with these people happen on the mountain bike trail \u2014 but his sympathy and understanding ring true. Those who think what now seems to be the case, that the war in Iraq was the most catastrophic foreign policy mistake this country ever made, will not find these paintings sufficient absolution for the cost, the trauma (here and in Iraq) and what will probably be decades of regional destabilization wrought by the war.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t seem to be Bush\u2019s intent, or the purpose of this book, the profits from which will be donated to a military and veterans\u2019 initiative run by the George W. Bush Presidential Center. There is nothing in this volume to support the thesis that Bush is using painting to work through his demons, or any regrets he may have about the wars he initiated.<\/p>\n

There is, however, ample evidence that the former president is more humble and curious than the Swaggering President Bush he enacted while in office. And his curiosity about art is not only genuine but relatively sophisticated.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth making some distinctions. There is the presidency, the president and the man who is or was the president. Since the rise of Donald Trump, Bush\u2019s respect for the institution of the presidency \u2014 especially the way he has honored the unwritten rules of conduct for how a president retires and the respect he shows his successors \u2014 has been seen in sharp relief. And while many may still strongly disagree with what he did as president \u2014 as a partisan political actor \u2014 that is now being tempered by a better understanding of who he is as a man. …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Say what one may about GWB he was, and is, more presidential as well as more\u00a0human\u00a0than Donald J. Trump will\u00a0likely ever be.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former President George W. Bush is a fair and improving amateur painter. Since leaving office he has devoted time to painting and his \u201cPortraits of Courage\u201d\u00a0, currently No. 1 on The Washington Post bestseller list. There is another side to President Bush not often seen during his presidency. It\u00a0is a more reflective side that shows\u00a0empathy … Continue reading Former President George W. Bush and His Art…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-and-dance","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8ovtF-6z","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":434,"url":"https:\/\/rationalnationusa.com\/blog\/archives\/434","url_meta":{"origin":407,"position":0},"title":"Trump’s Firing Of Obama Appointed Federal Prosecutors Creates Opportunity for Democrats…","author":"Les","date":"March 14, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Interesting thoughts. 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