Woody Gwyn was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1944, and received his arts education from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1976, he became a resident of Galisteo, New Mexico where he painted the surrounding landscapes including Canyon de Chelly. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions including the Tel Aviv Museum, Israel; le Centre Nationale des Arts Plastiques, Paris; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe. His work exists in private and corporate collections, in addition to the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, Virginia; Mobile Art Museum, Alabama; McNay Art Institute, Texas; Museum of Fine Arts, Texas; University of Houston, Texas; and the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Produced by Texas Tech University Press, the monograph Woody Gwyn records the artist’s unique contributions to contemporary Southwest landscape painting. Gwyn’s hyper-real landscapes aim to present the truth and beauty that lie in the way things exist. The artist decidedly includes interstate highways and similar reminders of modern life. His objective is to draw viewers into panoramic landscapes and lead them through scenes, as viewers practice while watching films. Gwyn sometimes paints aerial, downward views that are meant to evoke our indebtedness to photographic and satellite surveillance technology for helping us better understand how the earth looks. Woody Gwyn aspires to re-humanize our sense of space in nature.