George W. Bush Explains Nude Self-Portraits, Talks New Paintings
Tomorrow morning, George W. Bush will debut 24 paintings on the Today Show, including portraits of Vladimir Putin, Tony Blair, and the Dalai Lama. To promote the occasion, the former president discussed his hopes and fears as an artist in an interview with his daughter, Jenna Bush Hager, who works as a correspondent for the show.
Bush believes Putin et al. will be surprised by his talent. "I think they're going to be (like), 'Wow, George Bush is a painter,''' Bush said. "I'm sure when they heard I was painting, and if they had, they're going to say, 'Wow, I look forward to seeing a stick figure he painted of me."
That, of course, assumes those leaders haven't seen Bush's other paintings, which were published last year on Gawker and elsewhere courtesy of the hacker Guccifer.
"I was annoyed. It's an invasion of one's privacy," Bush said of the hacking. "And yeah, I was annoyed. And nor do I want my paintings to get out."
But what about those famous nude self-portraits? "I found it very interesting the first painting that came out was the one I painted of myself in the bathtub," Bush said. "I did so because I wanted to kind of shock my instructor."
