If George W. Bush had it his way, the world may never have found out that the former president now moonlights as a painter.
He slammed Guccifer, the hacker who intercepted the Bush family’s emails and first revealed some of Bush’s paintings, in an interview with his daughter Jenna Bush Hager airing Friday on NBC’s “Today.”
“I was annoyed. It’s an invasion of one’s privacy,” he said. “And yeah, I was annoyed. 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,” he added. “I did so because I wanted to kind of shock my instructor.”
Bush told his daughter he was “still learning” and believes that his artwork isn’t truly ready to be released. Nevertheless, an exhibit of Bush’s never-before-seen paintings of 24 world leaders — including Tony Blair, Vladimir Putin and the Dalai Lama — is set to go on display early this month at his presidential library in Dallas.
Asked how he thinks those foreign luminaries would react to their portraits, Bush self-deprecatingly joked that they would say “Wow. George Bush is a painter … Wow. I look forward to seeing a stick figure he painted of me.”
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