O'Donnell paints en plein aire – outdoors — and always with his tried and true method of 30 years.

  “It’s a method built on speed and capturing ‘that’ moment,” said O’Donnell.

  He uses award-winning strokes and an impressionist style.  On a recent day, he painted as he overlooked his favorite fly-fishing spot in the Ozarks.

  “He's quite a perfectionist, and I guess I am too, so together we really put our heart and soul into this project,” said Karen Glines, a journalist and author from St. Louis.

  It was Glines who originally suggested the project that is a Midwest masterpiece.

  “When we met, he said, ‘Karen, I can't write,’ and I said, ‘well, Billyo, I can't paint,’” said Glines.

  Their book, “Painting Missouri,” was more than an artistic whim: Missouri has 114 counties, more than most states, and it took seven years of creativity and 160,000 miles of travel.

  “The inspiration for this project was to turn my creative talent to my home state,” said O’Donnell.

  The stunning result is a one-of-a-kind collection of work from his photographic palette.  Here are some examples in the Ozarks that are in the book:
-- The St. Louis skyline from the roof of its Basilica;
-- New fallen snow on Kansas City's Plaza at sunset;
-- Pierce City just one week before the infamous tornado leveled everything in his picture on May 4, 2003;
-- Through the daily visitor to El Dorado Springs’ 1880s bandstand;
-- The rolling hills of Douglas County, strangely reminiscent of Tuscany;
-- A barn in Webster County near Springfield where he did farm work while he was an art student.

  It is those O’Donnell moments that reveal that we can go home again.

  “I like to go on location and paint from life, not to shoot a photograph and go back to the studio and paint,” he said.

  In every county, he did at least three original oil paintings.  For every one he picked for the book, collaborator Glines researched and wrote the word pictures -- and often not on location.

  “I didn't really know what Billyo was painting.  I kept hoping that what he painted and what I wrote about would be comparable,” said Glines, “and I would say, eight to nine out of ten times, what I wrote about at the end and what he painted were the same.”

  Glines says their chemistry for "Painting Missouri" was uncanny.

  “For me, this project was spiritual and mystical,” she said.

  For O’Donnell, it’s living his dream.  “To capture that regional quality of Missouri” is something no one else was doing, he said.

  “Painting Missouri” is headed for a second printing.  The entire collection will be on exhibit in Columbia until August, starting this Thursday. For details about that exhibit and another one in Springfield for three weeks next September, click here.