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This is not unusual for Texas elites; a ranch is more like a villa or a high end dacha than an actual working ranch and this is well understood by everyone reporting on it and most of the people who hear the reporting. Bush voters did not think his ranch produced anything, except maybe some game meat.
They purchased it shortly before he ran for president and moved to a house near Dallas after his presidency. The ranch aerved an important function when he was president, sure, so it's not as though it was only a campaign prop. But the conceit of Bush owning a ranch as part of his folksy, Texan heritage was a deliberate image he projected that was largely discarded once he didn't have a need for it. Now in his post-presidency he's much more free to pursue his interests independent of public image -- which turns out to be painting. (This was a late surprise to himself too I think, but definitely not in harmony with the image his campaign projected. Incidentally, and I love art so I don't want to look down on Bush for trying his hand at it -- I have seen his paintings, they had a large collection on display at the Truman Library in Missouri, and they might be the worst portraits I have ever seen in a professional gallery. They enter the uncanny valley, they're genuinely bad, several made me laugh out loud, and to the point that I actually felt a little embarrassed.)
Churchill liked painting as well, and I consider some of his watercolours the worst landscapes I've seen, so conservative politicans and amateur art don't seem that uncommon.
Grant, Eisenhower, Carter, and Bush all took up painting. I suppose when you've served as the most famous and powerful man in the world, art is a respite and source of solitude that has become unusually hard to come by.
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Hmph, looks like the left was right all along. (You know who else loved to paint but was really bad at it?...)
Was going to post this, but felt too low effort. Anyway I have to disagree, Hitlers painting of Neuschwanstein to appears to posses beauty, albeit one even the masses are capable of appreciating.
The true similarity between Adolf and George is inability to paint people.
Ah, having seen that I can now see why the director of the school of art recommended him to study architecture.
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Ouch!
It appears to, but when you look at it too much it's like every feature is drawn from a slightly different perspective -- I find it jarring, which is not the feeling you want to get from mass-appeal-beauty-type painting.
Ironically I think Hitler could have been quite successful as a cubist/modernist or something -- but of course he hated that stuff.
I confess I haven't seen Bush's art so can't comment -- is Hunter Biden any good?
A photo was taken from a nearby point and I can't see where mistakes are.
Googling the art of George Bush shows that he only paints portraits and I stand by my statement that he sucks at it. His painting of Putin is surpassed by works high schoolers.
More of a contemporary artist, but despite my distate for his style still better than oeuvre of Bush.
Look at the windows and buttresses -- none of them are individually wrong, but it's like they are all drawn from a slightly different viewpoint.
Unsettling.
If Hitler had moved to Paris after the war we would have one more interesting modern artist and one less homicidal dictator.
OK, that is pretty bad, lol.
ED: Damn I can't believe I missed the low effort joke --
Clearly Bush is EVEN WORSE than Hitler!
Huh, interesting -- I like his art-hoe look too!
I thought that was actually well done. To me it looks like it was drawn from a single point of view, where naturally the angles of each window and buttress etc. are different from each other relative to the beholder, most obviously when you compare the roofs.
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