By Brenna Edwards
The artist who taught former President George W. Bush how to paint praised his budding skills, saying that he’d go down in history as a “great artist.”
“He has such a passion for painting, it’s amazing,” Bonnie Flood, the artist from Cumming, Ga., told Fox 5 in Atlanta this week. “He’s going to go down in the history books as a great artist.”
Flood spent a month in Boca Grande, Fla., teaching Bush how to mix paints and use proper brush strokes. Their lessons lasted about six hours a day. The president, who started off painting mostly dogs, rapidly grew more comfortable and graduated to landscapes. He posts some of his work on his Facebook account.
The artist said that, while she wasn’t intimidated by teaching a former president, she was torn on what to call him. She finally settled on “43,” which is how Bush signs his paintings, an homage to him being the 43rd president.
“I called him ‘43’ because that’s the way he signed his paintings. When I really wanted him to do something, I would say, ‘Mr. President, you know that you don’t do it that way,” Flood said.
