From dust jacket notes: "Billy Morrow Jackson, a contemporary American 'realist' and one of the leading landscape artists of the Midwest, is widely recognized as a painter of light. Anyone who picks up this book and looks at Jackson's collected oeuvre will see that light is his medium - it shines, sparkles, casts shadows, flirts, illuminates, and carresses his works. Here are nearly a hundred stunning reproductions (three-quarters in full color) of many of the Illinois prairie landscapes, and well as the cityscapes, townscapes, interior views, works with social and political themes, and murals done by Jackson over the past forty years, all of them reflecting his fascination with the subtle yet pervasive impact of time and light on art and on life. Howard Wooden surveys Jackson's stylistic and technical development as an artist, beginning with his early black-and-white woodblock prints executed in Mexico in 1949 and 1950 and ending with three large murals painted in the late 1980s, one of which adorns the Illinois State Capitol. Jackson's works, which hang in the National Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and in many other museums across America, feature images derived, but not copies, from reality. A brief essay by Jackson on his painting technique appears in an appendix. A representational painter, Jackson is best known for his scenes of everyday activites, both indoor and outdoor, and his views of natural settings...."