'Wow, George Bush Is a Painter'

If George W. Bush, budding artist, has learned one lesson about his newfound passion, it is this: "Don't paint your wife." The former president will be releasing more than two dozen paintings in his first-ever art exhibit, a gallery of world leaders whom he has pictured on canvas. But if it is diplomatically delicate to capture the likeness of, say, Tony Blair or Vladimir V Putin, it turns out to be safer than trying Laura Bush.

"It needs some work," Laura Bush said of her husband's portrait of her during an interview of the former first couple conducted by their daughter Jenna Bush, an NBC correspondent, for the network's Today show.

The interview marks the opening of "The Art of Leadership: A President's Personal Diplomacy," to be on display at the George W Bush Presidential Center in Dallas. Some of Bush's early post-presidential paintings, including self-portraits in the bath and shower, as well as images of his pets, unintentionally became public when family email was hacked. Bush also gave Jay Leno a portrait of the late-night host during an appearance last year on The Tonight Show.

But this will be the first time Bush has revealed his work en masse for a general audience. None of the personal paintings will be in the exhibit, including the portrait of Laura. Instead, Bush focused on the leaders he worked with during eight tumultuous years in office. Some of the portraits will be accompanied by artifacts, photographs and personal reminiscences, according to the presidential centre.

Bush said none of his subjects had seen their portraits. Asked by his daughter what they may think, he said, "I think they're going to be, 'Wow, George Bush is a painter!."

He added, laughing: "I mean I'm sure when they heard that I was painting them, if they had, they're going to say, 'well, I look forward to seeing the stick figure he painted'. But I hope they take it in the spirit in which these were painted, and that was the spirit of friendship and that I admire them as leaders and was willing to give it a shot."

The former president expressed irritation that some of his other paintings were put on the web by hackers. "It's an invasion of one's privacy and, yeah, I was annoyed," he said. "And nor do I want my paintings to get out. And I found it very interesting the first painting that came out was the one I painted of myself in the bathtub. I did so because I wanted to kind of shock my instructor."

"And Mom," Jenna Bush added.

"And Mom," he agreed.

Meanwhile, history is not done with the elder George Bush, at least not if his advocates have anything to say about it. More than 800 supporters, allies, aides and even former opponents of Bush Senior, the 41st president, will gather in College Station, Texas, for a three-day reunion to mark the 25th anniversary of the first Bush administration and try to burnish its legacy along the way.

This seems to be a season for presidential rehabilitation, if not for the incumbent then for his predecessors. On Thursday night, Jimmy Carter attended the opening of a new play in Washington called Camp David, about his landmark Middle East peace treaty. Next week, four former presidents will travel to Austin to help the Lyndon B Johnson Presidential Library conduct a three-day conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, even as a play on Johnson shows on Broadway. And every week, it seems, Bill Clinton is working on what could be the ultimate legacy project, helping elect his wife president. None of them, however, has undergone the political reincarnation that George Herbert Walker Bush has. Frail from a form of Parkinson's disease, the 89-year-old senior Bush has benefited from a wave of historical revisionism that has transformed him from the biggest incumbent loser since William Howard Taft to, by at least one measure, the most popular former president of the past half century.

"This is a man who campaigned for a kinder, gentler nation," said Mark K Updegrove, director of the Johnson library, who is working on a book about the two President Bushes. "And it's interesting that after a quarter-century, he's getting a kinder and gentler verdict in history."

Updegrove's is one of several books in the works about the 41st president and will take its place among recent documentaries and awards.

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