What do you do after you’re finished doing the most important job in America? It depends.
Grover Cleveland played the stock market. Teddy Roosevelt went exploring, in Brazil. Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize. William Howard Taft became a Supreme Court justice.
A show of the visuals, called “Portraits of Courage”, recently opened at the George W. Bush Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and features 66 of them. There’s also a book being released.
They’ll be on display at the center until October.
“I painted these men and women as a way to honor their service to the country and to show my respect for their sacrifice and courage,” Bush wrote in the book’s introduction. “I hope to draw attention to the challenges some face when they come home and transition to civilian life — and the need for our country to better address them.”
He’s told numerous reporters that he took up the pastime after reading that Winston Churchill had done the same.
“[It] keeps me active, so I’m not on the couch chewing potato chips all the time. It’s one of the great learning experiences.”
News of his creative passion first broke back in 2013 when a hacker published an email belonging to his sister, Dorothy Bush Koch.
Proceeds from the show and book will go to Bush’s Military Service Initiative, an organization that helps veterans transition to civilian life.