Buck Schiwetz is best known for his depiction of the Texas scene, and Texas predominates in this volume of eighty works of art, sixty-four of them splendidly reproduced in full color. Included are a number of scenes from his boyhood in Central Texas, beautiful interpretations of the Texas Gulf Coast, and paintings and drawings from the artist's early career, as he takes us to New York, Louisiana, Mexico, and Italy.

The Gulf of Mexico has inspired countless writers and artists since Cabeza de Vaca first set foot on the Texas shore. Here nine contemporary artists present their vivid and eloquent impressions of the Texas Gulf Coast.
Forty-seven stunning color plates reveal the Texas Gulf as seen by these artists---its beaches, marshes, bays and estuaries, its birds and plant life, its ever-changing moods and colors, the boats that ply its waters, the fish and game with which its waters and shores abound.
John Guerin s brilliant impressionistic paintings, well known to those who frequent leading...

It is a land of contrast, of far-spreading plains and high-reaching canyon walls, and of air stretched thin--a land made for painting, not, perhaps, for living. Intrigued by the danger, the drama, and the savage light of this land of geological upheaval and downcutting, artists have long been drawn to the far west of Texas. The forty-nine paintings selected for this volume display the variety, the majesty, the glory of this vast region.
It is indeed a natural studio for artists. Space and scale are there--the broad horizontals of the open plains and the stark verticals of the sheer...

Impressionist art isn't just for quaint French cafe scenes; the Texas landscape and the legendary longhorn are equally elegant in the beautiful impressionistic artwork of Frank Reaugh. This volume contains a large selection of impressionistic work by Reaugh, who began painting out on the prairies near Dallas in the late 1800s.

The sport of hunting--its celebration of the wild, the natural, the out-of-doors--has given rise to its own body of art. Extraordinary artistic skills wedded with decades of experience as a naturalist and hunter have secured for Herb Booth a place among the contemporary masters of sporting art. In this beautiful book, illustrated with fifty color plates and dozens of etchings and lithographs, Booth's superb technique and his portrayal of an American tradition in the process of change is revealed in a variety of classic hunting and fishing scenes: upland and waterfowl shooting, deer hunting in...

"There never has been a worse time to start a new press," Frank Wardlaw said when invited to found a scholarly publishing arm at Texas A&M University. Twenty-five years later, the press he nonetheless founded in 1974 proves that the worst of times can be made the best of times with the right people, the right mission, and the right support.
Henry Dethloff, a longtime observer of the Texas A&M scene, tells the story of Texas A&M University Press beginning with its founding under the leadership of the inimitable Wardlaw--a monumental figure in American university publishing circles. The...

Places of special beauty, grandeur, and abundance bring us closer to nature's healing powers. However, the healing touch of nature can also be found in our own backyards. From the minute to the grandiose, nature's beauty can lift, soothe, and strengthen everyone who is willing to take a moment to watch and listen. It was in the Big Thicket of East Texas and the Big Bend of far West Texas where artist Jeanne Norsworthy began to appreciate these special gifts. She responded by creating drawings and paintings that now transmit the power of these extraordinary sites to those who view her pictures...

In "God's wilds" John Muir found beauty, inspiration, and the courage to battle governmental powers for the preservation of natural landscapes. Through his writing and his activism (he was the founding president of the Sierra Club), countless others have also found a call to enjoy and preserve the natural world. In a profoundly intriguing, original view of Muir, Dennis Williams shows him as a fundamentalist about nature, who learned his passion, his way of organizing the world, and his moral principles in the demanding world of nineteenth-century Calvinism.
Muir, still one of the most...

The rugged land of Texas' Big Bend region is legendary. Towering mountains, austere desert, canyons, and rivers converge in a place of beauty, loneliness, and adventure. Fort Worth artist Dennis Blagg began painting landscapes from the Big Bend twenty years ago. His breathtaking, near-photorealistic portraits of this remote mountain desert are as big as the landscape itself--some of the paintings are ten feet long and four feet wide.

Through his work, Blagg brings the viewer both the beauty and the hostility of West Texas. Blagg has a fascination with and love for his "ever-changing"...

Walk into any of sixty post offices or federal buildings in the state of Texas and you may be greeted by a surprising sight: magnificent mural art on the lobby walls.
In the midst of the Great Depression, a program was born that would not only give work to artists but also create beauty and optimism for a people worn down by hardship and discouragement. This New Deal program commissioned artists to create post office murals--the people's art--to celebrate the lives, history, hopes, and dreams of ordinary Americans. In Texas alone, artists painted ninety-seven artworks for sixty-nine post...