Like if it eventually emerged that Tony Abbott was secretly into scrapbooking or that Julia Gillard was an accomplished street magician, George Bush the painter is one of the most incongruous political personas we can remember.
Over the weekend the reliable late night show punchline and former US President launched his latest exhibition, ‘The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy’, at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, evolving from meme worthy dog portraits and bizarre (read: nude) self-portraits to a stately body of work depicting various world leaders encountered during his Presidential tenure, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Britain’s Tony Blair and Germany’s Angela Merkel.
“I spent a lot of time on personal diplomacy and I befriended leaders and learned about their families and their likes and dislikes, to the point where I felt comfortable painting them,” Bush said. “Painting portraits of my friends and some people who weren’t necessarily my friends gave me a sense to convey a feeling I have about them because I got to know them well in the presidency.”
One of which was erstwhile Australian Prime Minister John Howard, whose portrait, as in real life, is all about the eyebrows. Nice work, George.
