Throughout his four-decade career as a plein-air painter, Gregory I. McHuron (1945-2012) worked outdoors on almost a daily basis. His presence in the field was legendary in Jackson, Wyoming, where he lived, and in Grand Teton National Park, where he found many of his subjects. McHuron saw each day as an adventure, and the more remote the painting location the better. A committed wildlife artist, he considered himself to be "nature's interpreter and guard" and used his art and his voice to speak out on behalf of wild places and wild creatures. The true artist, he said, must "live his art and paint from the heart." This retrospective of McHuron's life in art is a story of living in the now, as well as a guide to finding what McHuron called the "WOW" that serenades your soul. It is a journey of discovery, as meaningful as it is colorful.

Such are the observations that filter through the galleries during Tom Palmore's exhibitions in which animals steal the show.

Born in Ada and living in Oklahoma, Palmore emerged from the 1970s Photorealist movement as a maverick. His career includes more than a decade on the East Coast, where he refined his skills at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and exhibited in New York's prominent contemporary galleries. Palmore used his technical virtuosity to explore his passion for the animal kingdom. Then as today, his monumental paintings received critical acclaim, and his incongruous juxtapositions of realistic primates in silk-and-velvet interiors earned him the nickname Gorilla Man.

Palmore's fidelity to an animal's visage is intended to make it proud. However, the contexts in which he places them are pure Palmore, infused with his penchant for wit and the unexpected. His portrait of Oscar, the famed rodeo bull, is set against Palmore-designed wallpaper of cowboys catapulted into the air. A rooster surveys its Grant Wood countryside, and an imposing lion is oblivious to the diminutive monarch butterfly that shares its epithet. In all cases, Palmore's paintings loom large not only in scale but also in raised consciousness of the "earthlings with whom we share this planet," as he says.

For twenty years, Gene and Rebecca Tobey worked together as husband and wife and artistic partners. They are best known for their creations of ceramic and bronze sculptures of abstracted animal forms. In their art, bear, buffalo, elk, and other majestic animals stand in dynamic, timeless attitudes.

Their work is a sculptural statement about the dominant personality of the animal. Magic occurs as the sculptures' surfaces become canvases upon which the Tobeys have carved, drawn, painted, and scratched "graffito" drawings of other animals, human figures, scenes of starry night skies, mountain ranges, and symbols and geometric shapes, all on beautifully patinated surfaces. In the pages of "Partners in Art," Rebecca Tobey shares her insights into their creative and collaborative process and shows the creations she and Gene forged during their two-decade partnership. In 2006 Gene Tobey passed away after battling leukemia. Rebecca Tobey lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and continues their legacy of creation and spirit.

Inspired by nineteenth-century painters and photographers, Congress passed legislation preserving America's spectacular natural resources for the enjoyment of all. Today, artists continue to play a significant role in interpreting these iconic panoramas, intimate corners, and diverse wildlife within our national parks. In Art of the National Parks, seventy painters and sculptors offer distinctive visions of eight of the nation's most beloved wild lands: Acadia, Everglades, Grand Canyon, Grand Tetons, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion. Susan Hallsten McGarry, well-known author and curator, guides readers on a lively journey through the artists' styles, techniques, and philosophies. Art historian/author Jean Stern, director of the Irvine Museum, discusses the historic artists who put into motion our nation's conservation consciousness. And Terry Lawson Dunn, biologist and educator, highlights the national parks' ecological successes and challenges. With more than 450 artworks, this glorious, large-format book is a must for anyone who has hiked the trails, watched a sunset, marveled at buffalo herds, or yearned to experience our nation's mythic and transformative vistas. It is also an indispensible compendium of artists who are at the forefront of twenty-first-century American landscape and wildlife art.

Art of the National Parks is available in seven different book jackets depicting the art and beauty from each national park featured in the book. Featured parks include: Acadia, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone/Tetons, Zion, Everglades, Yosemite, and Rocky Mountain. Special cover requests will be accommodated as stock allows based on cover availability. To ensure special handling, please order direct.

Jane Culp's muscular paintings and drawings make palpable the rush she feels when on location interacting with nature. From her modernist perspective she conveys a powerful sense of the moment using surface tension and movement. "I'm interested in the life and language of form", she explains. "How form talks as it goes into space, how light and distance swallow and selectively magnify the forms, how a rhythmic movement in space releases forms that change direction, split, bulge, and fall back into space". Working in harsh weather conditions that force her to strap her easel to her knees, Culp explores wilderness terrain along the spine of the Sierra Nevada, transporting viewers from her home base north of the Anza-Borrego Desert, through Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks, up to Tioga Pass, and into Yosemite Valley.

Out of the struggles of the Great Depression, Charles W. Thwaites (1904-2002) rose to prominence as a muralist and leading portraitist in Wisconsin. An active exhibitor in hundreds of local, regional, and national art exhibitions, he won awards and critical acclaim from New York to California.

Thwaites began his career straddling the cultural demands for a truly American art while being lured to the formalism of European modernism and the freedom of expression it espoused. When he moved to New Mexico in the 1950s, he found camaraderie with the Taos Moderns, going on to create sophisticated abstractions that synthesized his personal response with universal emotions.

In this first examination of Thwaites' biography and oeuvre, examples of his Wisconsin and New Mexico paintings are put into the context of American art. Also included are numerous excerpts from his writings, which are profound observations on the meaning of art and the goals of an artist who authentically responds to his inner spirit.

Freedom of expression, underpinned by a disciplined study of nature, art history, and the self, were the raison d'etre of this artist who disdained being labeled or placed in a category. As he noted, "There are 1,000 ways to paint, why limit yourself to one manner? It is of no importance whether a picture is 'modern, ' 'academic, ' or what have you. Is it good art, is it bad painting, or is it just indifferent? To understand yourself--to understand your personal philosophy--is to understand your likes and dislikes in an organized way."

Thwaites is destined to be recognized as one of America's most skilled, colorful, and admired post-World War II modernists.

For three decades the signature "W. C. Hook" has connoted dynamic design, saturated colour, and muscular brushwork. William Cather Hook's ability to straddle the border between pictorial illustrationsion and pure paint, between traditional yet modern, has won him collectors worldwide. Less well-known about this master of acrylics is the breadth of his subject matter. In this retrospective of paintings dating from the early 1980s to the present Hook guides the reader on a journey that includes the back roads of northern New Mexico, the high country of the colourado Rockies and Sangre de Cristos, California's Pacific coastline and central valley, the reaches of the Sonoran Desert, and historic vistas in England and Italy. Whether depicting crashing surf, aspen forests, or luminous big skies, Hook's vision is inviting, vibrant, and infused with radiant light. Also explored is the artist's biography, from his Kansas roots to his current studios in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Carmel, California.