Exhibition held at San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, Calif., Jan. 16-May 9, 1999 and others.

The realist paintings of John Register (1939-1996) evoke the modern American West with unique clarity and chromatic richness. And no one can describe Register's artistic transformations better than Barnaby Conrad III, curator for the first Register retrospective to tour the West.

A former editor of Art World magazine and former senior editor of Hot magazine, Conrad wrote The Martini and The Cigar, top-selling illustrated histories. Conrad also knew Register personally, and his biographical narrative in John Register: Persistent Observer is as sharp and lurid as Register's oil paintings. As Conrad puts it, Register's eerily realistic depictions of "empty coffeeshops in Los Angeles, old hotels in Chicago and bus stations in the Southwestern desert celebrate sunlight, but also a haunting stillness tinged with regret and hope".

Once a highly paid associate creative director at Ogilvy & Mather, Register, at the age of 33, abruptly abandoned a Madison Avenue career and never returned to the office. He spent the next 24 years producing oil paintings, some of which are owned by the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art and other museums