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78 I f you want to know all about Richard Stout, don't ask the famously reticent artist. The answers are in plain sight, within the canvases he painted from the 1990s on, where he did one better than Diebenkorn's "Ocean Park" series by merging abstraction with evocations of sea, sky, and … interiors. A courtly gentleman at 83, the artist and former University of Houston professor is soft-spoken; he does not waste words. Stout has weathered the storms of 20th- and 21st-century art isms with one of its central, deceptively straightforward mediums: painting on canvas, with an occasional foray into sculpture. He has plunged fully into the dialogue of abstraction versus realism to have it both ways. His acrylics on canvas belie the properties of that medium, which is often the domain of lesser talents. The artist does more with acrylic than most painters effect with oil, bringing a fl uidity and richness to the surface that is dexterous, shimmering, and convincing, taking the viewer to the outer shoals of time and place. His best works are arguably those he's painted since the 1990s — an ongoing elegy to his wife, Anne, who passed away in 1985. The couple met at a St. Thomas lecture in 1965, during the de Menil era, when the university was a hotbed of artistic dialogue. Anne — the sister of former Menil director Paul Winkler, who was also a close confi dent of Cy Twombly — worked as a secretary. They wed in 1965 and raised two children in the Montrose home that has fi gured as Stout's muse and domicile for decades. He moved there in 1960, beginning a half-century residence in the handsome double-decker home crafted in 1917, of a type known as a Foursquare. (Stout now lives and studios in the adjoining back building, a two-story structure originally built in 1967 as a studio. A son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren inhabit the main house.) These paintings of the last 20 years circle around beauty, domesticity, and a ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF HIS 60TH YEAR AS ONE OF HOUSTON'S ART PATRIARCHS, RICHARD STOUT CONTEMPLATES A GRAND AND ENVIABLE TRIFECTA: A CAREER RETROSPECTIVE TRAVELING TO TWO TEXAS MUSEUMS, AN EXHIBITION AT A RESPECTED GALLERY, AND THE RELEASE OF A MAJOR VOLUME FROM TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY PRESS. CATHERINE D. ANSPON DOES A STUDIO VISIT AND FINDS AN ARTIST AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME. PAINTER'S PAINTER'S PROGRESS PROGRESS PROGRESS PAINTER'S PROGRESS PAINTER'S PHOTOGRAPHY BY JENNY ANTILL CLIFTON