So When Did George W Bush Actually Become a Good Painter?

I mean, let’s not get it twisted: George W Bush is still a horrible man. An idiot and a war criminal. But if you remember, a few years back the Romanian hacker known as Guccifer hacked the Bush family’s email accounts and leaked the former president’s (rather amateurish) paintings of dogs and still lifes. He became something of a laughing stock for them amongst the late night comedian crowd. But something has changed between then and now. He’s become… good. His latest paintings of war veterans are actually kind of mesmerizing.

Via W:

Now it looks like Bush has been honing his artistic practice over the last few years, if Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tributes to America’s Warriors, published by Penguin Random House, is anything to go by. It marks Bush’s latest output, and maybe it’s the subject—soldiers who’ve served in the U.S. military since 9/11—but Bush finally seems to have hit his painterly stride, as evidenced by a new approach that emphasizes brush strokes, extreme close-ups, and non-local color. Did he take a painting class? Did he call up Anthony Hopkins? Did he decide there’s no better place to atone than on the canvas—or that he simply wanted to be a no. 1 New York Times best seller? Judge for yourself with a look at some of his latest portraits, here.

Can we actually separate the art from the artist here?

Top photo: “Sergeant Daniel Casara,” U.S. Army, 1994 – 2008.