A hacker recently broke into the email of Bush’s sister Dorothy, and among the files they stole, were some pictures of paintings by the former president.
You can see the paintings here:
These are actually kind of nice. He has sort of a David Hockney thing going.
Granted, I couldn’t see these hanging in the Louvre, but I could see them going for a couple hundred dollars at a local art gallery, even if one didn’t know Bush painted them.
So all you art critics on the SDMB, what do you think?
Extremely amateur to my taste (as was to be expected), and no way they would sell for hundreds of bucks. In an ideal world that is. In a world where Thomas Kinkade has penetrated so many American homes, all bets are off.
Not terribly awful for an amateur. His painting of his dog is much better.
Not bad.
I don’t think they were painted with selling in mind, seeing as how they were only found by hacking a private email address. So it doesn’t seem fair to criticize based on that. And it’s certainly better brushwork than I could pull off. In my amateur opinion, I think he has a good eye for lighting and shadows, but his perspective needs work.
Gotta love that he signed the Barney one “43.” Comedy gold.
He signs his paintings “43”?
They’re givin’ you a number and takin’ 'way your name!
Well, adding savant to his current one word legacy can only be an improvement.
I’m hardly the last word on art, but I like the Barney painting and I kind of like the bathtub one, too.
I liked them. Did he just pick this up after his retirement? Seems pretty good for just four years of practice.
How’s it legal to post these online without his (or at least his sister’s) permission? This seems a major violation of privacy even for a former president. (I’m referring to the website, not the thread.)
I like them; the composition is interesting and keeps me looking. I hope he sticks with it.
I’m pretty sure it is not. Here is the arstechnica article on it: Bush family privacy shattered after e-mails, photos exposed online.
The hack also exposed private emails regarding the health of the elder George Bush. I hope the perpetrators are caught and brought to book, since I absolutely agree that it is a major violation of their privacy.
As some of the comments at the linked article state, it isn’t obvious what the hacker intended here. If the idea was to make the Bush family look bad, it has obviously failed. I feel very empathetic to a grieving family that has been violated such, and the paintings don’t scream “I’m an evil guy”, they’re somewhat … adorable.
That was weird–I had to go back to check my photos on my phone to make sure it wasn’t the same picture. When my mom was in the hospital in 2011, there was a picture hanging on the wall there that was almost identical to Bush’s bathtub pic. Same colors, very similar composition. I snapped a pic because I thought it was a weird thing to be hanging on a hospital wall. Not the same painting, but similar enough to make me notice. Here’s the pic.
Is there some sub-school of art where people paint pictures of themselves in the bathtub using yellow backgrounds? 
Yes.
Regarding the paintings, I’m a starship doctor not an art critic, but I’ll say that while I doubt I’d buy them or even use them as a desktop background they’re a lot better than I could do.
Oh my God! The Truthers were wrong. 9-11 was done by bin Laden, and then the Bush cabal sowed seeds of conspiracy for the Truthers. All in a ploy to pass off an intentional leak as a “hack,” in an effort to sell paintings! It’s all obvious, sheeple!
I’m not sure I would buy then regardless, but decent for someone with no training, but people with a fixed ideology wouldn’t care. It’s like Hitler, who was trained (not a Godwin!), yet his paintings are treated on the level with Cecilia Gimenez, because killing a bunch of people is not bad enough.
Barney is pretty good. I don’t know about naked Bush. Perspective or something seems off of those. Of course, I would want to own any one of these, they’ve gotta be worth something some day!
Hitler was trained? By whom? 
I like them but they do lack perspective entirely.
It’s kind of a common meme based around Frida Kahlo’s What the Water Gave Me.
Mostly people just use their phones. But there are paintings out there as well.
