With more counties than most other states, Missouri posed a unique challenge for Billyo O'Donnell. Setting out to create an outdoor painting on location - en plein air - for each of Missouri's 114 counties plus the city of St. Louis, this award-winning artist devoted years of travel and logged more than 150,000 miles to capture the many textures of a multifaceted state.

Painting Missouri is an extraordinarily rich collection of scenes and seasons along the highways and byways of the Show-Me State. Turn these pages to find a farmer driving a combine in a Ray County cornfield or the Benedictine convent in Nodaway County or mist rising from snow at sunrise in Prairie State Park. Here are scenes both familiar and intimate: farmhouse and barns, Lover's Leap in Hannibal, and the view of St. Louis from the roof of the Cathedral Basilica. O'Donnell even captured Pierce City before a tornado destroyed the town in 2003 - and painted Canton from a vista that another twister had newly opened.

Karen Glines provides essential historical information about the counties, from interesting facts about their foundings and names to the stories behind their courthouses. Drawing on extensive research in many local historical societies, Glines shares what she learned about the early histories and present concerns of the state's diverse regions, including local anecdotes, Civil War stories, and insights into the roles of Native Americans in regional history. Additional comments by O'Donnell relate some of his experiences while creating the paintings. Paintings and essays combine to create a masterful volume that immerses the reader in the passion that both artist and writer feel for the state's beauty.

"In Missouri," observes O'Donnell, "I have found all that an artist needs, and beyond this, I have found an even deeper connection to place." For all who pick up Painting Missouri, that connection will surely resound.

"Through poetry and art, [this book] tells the story of hundreds of artists and volunteers who turned boarded up windows into works of art with messages of hope, healing and unity"--

Learn to capture the beauty and drama of the sky. A good sky is the essence of successful landscape and seascape paintings, and this practical book covers everything you will need to know to paint a sky that captures the mood and atmosphere of a scene. With over 200 paintings, it explains techniques, demonstrates the painting process including step-by-step instruction on painting in oils with the alla prima technique. Advice is given on using alternative colours and creative intepretations and ideas offered to inspire and develop skills and a personal style. Includes detailed instruction on equipment, tone, composition and perspective, and practical advice on painting en plein air and travelling light. Of interest to all artists particularly oil painters, and superbly illustrated with 218 colour paintings.

From the 1930s to the early 1940s, Ste. Genevieve, Missouri was host to one of the most significant art colonies of its time. An American Art Colony is a historical and pictorial journey through the works of these magnificent painters. Their chosen subjects are not of the traditional bucolic landscape; instead they portray the human condition in terms both of political upheaval and of Depression era events. Collectively, the authors present, through a series of biographical essays, an analysis of these painters' lives, their art, and the world in which they lived. The artists are: Thomas Hart Benton, Sister Cassiana Marie, Fred E. Conway, Joseph James Jones, Miriam McKinnie, Joseph John Paul Meert, Bernard Peters, Jesse Beard Rickly, Aimee Goldstone Schweig, Martyl Schweig, E. Oscar Thalinger, Joseph Paul Vorst, and Matthew E. Ziegler.

From the glacier-flattened northwest to the Appalachian hills and valleys to the east and south, barns dot the Ohio landscape. Built with wooden nails and mortise-and-tenon joints and assembled with beams hand-hewn from nearby trees, some of these magnificent structures have witnessed three centuries. Many display the unique carpentry of masterful barn builders, including "mystery" wooden spikes and tongue-and-groove two-inch flooring. Sadly, a number of these barns, neglected for years, risk crumbling any day. Join artist and author Robert Kroeger on a trip to each of Ohio's eighty-eight counties to view some of the state's oldest and most historic barns before they're gone.

A unique system for jump-starting artistic creativity, encouraging experimentation and growth, and increasing sales for artists of all levels, from novices to professionals. Have you landed in a frustrating rut? Are you having trouble selling paintings in galleries, getting bogged down by projects you can’t seem to finish or abandon, or finding excuses to avoid working in the studio? Author Carol Marine knows exactly how you feel—she herself suffered from painter’s block, until she discovered “daily painting.” The idea is simple: do art (usually small) often (how often is up to you), and if you’d like, post and sell it online. Soon you’ll find that your block dissolves and you’re painting work you love—and more of it than you ever thought possible! With her encouraging tone and useful exercises, Marine teaches you to: -Master composition and value -Become confident in any medium including oil painting, acrylic painting, watercolors, and other media -Choose subjects wisely -Stay fresh and loose -Photograph, post, and sell your art online -Become connected to the growing movement of daily painters around the world

A collection of rich artifacts from one thousand years of artistic production in what is now Missouri. Art Along the Rivers marks the two-hundredth anniversary of Missouri's statehood. This exhibition catalogue presents extraordinary objects produced or collected within a 150-mile region around St. Louis, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, furniture, ceramics, metals, and textiles. As a celebration of the cultural and artistic traditions of this region, the catalog looks within--and beyond--the years of statehood to reveal how the region's geography, raw materials, and pressing social issues shaped over one thousand years of rich artistic production. Though these objects have rarely been considered in connection with one another, the catalog brings them into dialogue to establish and celebrate their shared artistic history. Art Along the Rivers serves as the first significant publication to introduce this primary artistic material to a global audience.

The first biography in over sixty years of a great American artist whose paintings are more famous than the man who made them. George Catlin has been called the “first artist of the West,” as none before him lived among and painted the Native American tribes of the Northern Plains. After a false start as a painter of miniatures, Catlin found his calling: to fix the image of a “vanishing race” before their “extermination”—his word—by a government greedy for their lands. In the first six years of the 1830s, he created over six hundred portraits—unforgettable likenesses of individual chiefs, warriors, braves, squaws, and children belonging to more than thirty tribes living along the upper Missouri River. Political forces thwarted Catlin’s ambition to sell what he called his “Indian Gallery” as a national collection, and in 1840 the artist began three decades of self-imposed exile abroad. For a time, his exhibitions and writings made him the most celebrated American expatriate in London and Paris. He was toasted by Queen Victoria and breakfasted with King Louis-Philippe, who created a special gallery in the Louvre to show his pictures. But when he started to tour “live” troupes of Ojibbewa and Iowa, Catlin and his fortunes declined: He changed from artist to showman, and from advocate to exploiter of his native performers. Tragedy and loss engulfed both. This brilliant and humane portrait brings to life George Catlin and his Indian subjects for our own time. An American original, he still personifies the artist as a figure of controversy, torn by conflicting demands of art and success.

A new look at George Caleb Bingham's iconic river paintings and his creative process in making them George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) moved to Missouri as a child and began painting the scenes of Missouri life for which he is now famous in the 1840s. Navigating the West explores how Bingham's iconic river paintings reveal the cultural and economic significance of the massive Mississippi and Missouri waterways to mid-19th-century society. Focusing on the artist's working methods and preparatory drawings, the book also explores Bingham's representations of people and places and situates these images in a dialogue with other contemporary depictions of the region. Of particular note are two landmark essays investigating Bingham's creative process through comparisons of infrared images of 17 of his paintings with both his preparatory drawings and the completed works, casting new light on his previously understudied process. Technical analysis of the artist's lauded masterpiece, Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, reveals Bingham's considerable revisions to the painting. In the concluding essay, the 20th-century revival of the artist's work is discussed within the context of American Regionalism and in light of a shifting sequence of narratives about the nation's past and future. Distributed for the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Saint Louis Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Amon Carter Museum of American Art (10/04/14-01/04/15) Saint Louis Art Museum (02/22/15-05/17/15) The Metropolitan Museum of Art (06/22/15-09/20/15)