Roger Winter has always been preoccupied with “recording reality in all its strangeness,” in the words of biographer and art historian Susie Kalil. His works partake of wide-ranging influences: childhood memories of gospel hymns blaring from a loudspeaker atop the “Holy Roller” church near his home; strange totems composed of crows, foxes, angels, and old family photographs; rusted cars resting among chest-high weeds; faces reflected in the windows of a New York City bus. According to his siblings, he has been an artist since he was “pre-verbal,” and in a career spanning eight decades, he has continually reinvented himself, breaching the boundaries of one stylistic convention after another—never content to allow the expression of his vision to be constrained to a single vocabulary. In this definitive retrospective of Winter’s life and art, Kalil explores not only the myriad influences of the artist and his dizzying stylistic journey but also allows Winter’s work to pose important questions: Why do some people become artists and others don’t? What gives artists their unique modes of perception and expression? Where is the line of separation between what is seen and what is represented? Between the maker and what is made? The Art of Roger Winter: Fire and Ice offers an in-depth portrait of one of today’s most important American painters. Critics, collectors, scholars, students, and art lovers will glean deep insights from this study in contrasts.

This new edition draws on Roger Winters' considerable experience from several years of classroom instruction as well as professional work, culminating in a thoroughly revised introduction to the elements and domains of drawing. More attention is given to the visual ideas of drawing in this edition, dealing with seminal topics such as letter design, geometry, and subjects, but also drawing for picture books and graphic novels, as well as providing practical information of how one learns to draw professionally. While the Internet has permanently reduced the distance between cultures, this new edition reflects this phenomenon with content on the emergence of a global art. This book shows a special interest—without taking sides—in the intellectualizing of art brought about by university art departments and technology, and the effect this has had on traditional skill-based approaches to art. A brief glossary is included, as well as a helpful appendix which offers a series of exercises on several core topics for student use.

This new edition of On Drawing introduces the main elements and domains of drawing throughout history, including seminal topics such as letter design, geometry, and subjects, but also drawing for picture books and graphic novels, as well as providing practical information of how one learns to draw professionally. A brief glossary is included, as well as a helpful appendix which offers a series of exercises on several core topics for student use.

A medieval mystery featuring Roger, the travelling peddler, as he investigates the death of a lady in a manor. Her husband claims it was an accident, but word is he has had an eye on a widow nearby and wanted to be free.

How birds have evolved and adapted to survive winter Birds in Winter is the first book devoted to the ecology and behavior of birds during this most challenging season. Birds remaining in regions with cold weather must cope with much shorter days to find food and shelter even as they need to avoid predators and stay warm through the long nights, while migrants to the tropics must fit into very different ecosystems and communities of resident birds. Roger Pasquier explores how winter affects birds’ lives all through the year, starting in late summer, when some begin caching food to retrieve months later and others form social groups lasting into the next spring. During winter some birds are already pairing up for the following breeding season, so health through the winter contributes to nesting success. Today, rapidly advancing technologies are enabling scientists to track individual birds through their daily and annual movements at home and across oceans and hemispheres, revealing new and unexpected information about their lives and interactions. But, as Birds in Winter shows, much is visible to any interested observer. Pasquier describes the season’s distinct conservation challenges for birds that winter where they have bred and for migrants to distant regions. Finally, global warming is altering the nature of winter itself. Whether birds that have evolved over millennia to survive this season can now adjust to a rapidly changing climate is a problem all people who enjoy watching them must consider. Filled with elegant line drawings by artist and illustrator Margaret La Farge, Birds in Winter describes how winter influences the lives of birds from the poles to the equator.

Full of fun pictures which celebrate the arrival of the magical winter season, Bright Baby Touch and Feel Winter is an engaging book to share with babies and toddlers. There are pictures of a jolly snowman, sparkling snowflake, a winter forest and more to look at, and the pages have different touch-and-feel textures, which little fingers will love to explore. Each spread features full-color images to look at and simple text labels to learn, plus a touch-and-feel element for extra winter fun. This multi-sensory picture book which will encourage children to look, touch and listen!

Everett Spruce came to Texas from his Arkansas home in 1925 to study at the Dallas Art Institute. Over the next seven decades, he became one of the most important painters and teachers in the region. One of the “Dallas Nine,” a group of influential Texas Regionalists that included Jerry Bywaters, Otis Dozier, William Lester, and others, Spruce was among the artists who lobbied the Texas Centennial Commission for a greater role in the Centennial Exposition of 1936. These efforts, though unsuccessful, nevertheless led to greater recognition and influence for Texas art and artists. Spruce was assistant director and taught art at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts until 1940 when he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin. He painted and taught at the university for the next 38 years, guiding and shaping the next generation of Texas artists, including Roger Winter, William Hoey, and others. Spruce died in 2002 at the age of 94. Texas Made Modern: The Art of Everett Spruce traces Spruce’s artistic evolution from his early experimental work of the 1920s through the mysterious, surrealist-imbued landscapes of the 1930s. The work addresses his boldly expressionistic imagery of the 1940s and his abstract expressionist–inspired paintings of the mid-twentieth century. Departing from previous accounts of Spruce, which label him a prototypical regionalist, this study reveals the nuanced meanings behind the artist’s shifting approaches to Texas subject matter and resituates his artwork within the broader narrative of American art.

Roger Cecil (1942-2015) has been described as one of the great abstract artists of his generation, yet in his lifetime he was hardly known outside a circle of fellow painters. He was content to paint for himself, protecting his privacy and exhibiting rarely. If he did show his work, collectors rushed to acquire it. Among curators, he was a legendary figure. When his body was found after a police search in 2015, his death made headlines. At art college in the early 1960s he was a star of his generation, but he walked out on a scholarship to the Royal College of Art and returned to practise on his own in the South Wales mining village and terraced house where he grew up. He devoted himself to painting, living simply and working as a casual labourer, opencast miner and art tutor while producing work of extraordinary beauty and sophistication. After his parents' deaths the whole house became his studio. This book presents for the first time the extraordinary power and beauty of his work across his whole career. Comparisons can be drawn with great twentieth-century abstract artists, Dubuffet, de Staël and Tàpies, but Roger Cecil sought to be - and was - remarkably uninfluenced. The reputation of his mesmerising art can only grow as his legacy is revealed --

Over almost 30 years, Roger Ballen has produced some of the most compelling and thought-provoking images in contemporary photography. His work is unflinching, confronting and always deeply moving. With its roots in the photo-documentary tradition, Ballen's approach has expanded to become an unforgettable vision of the human condition.