The Beautiful and Enduring Ozarks - Softcover

Leland Payton's roots run deep through the hills and mist-filled river valleys of the Ozark Mountains. Born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks, he is a descendant of Scotch-Irish pioneers who crossed through the Cumberland Gap soon after Daniel Boone. An image maker from childhood on, he studied painting under Edwin Dickinson at the Art Student's League in New York. He took up photography in the 1960s and became one of the first to do underwater photography in the clear, spring-fed streams of the Ozarks. He has sketched, painted, and photographed the region and its people all his life. Exhibitions of his photographs have been shown in many art galleries, including the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, the St. Louis Art Museum, and the Springfield (MO) Art Museum. He is also co-author (with wife Crystal) of several books on popular culture published by Abbeville Press and St. Martin's Press in New York, Chronicle Books in San Francisco, and others. He is both a real hillbilly and a real artist, as this book proves.