The artwork of Rita Deanin Abbey, UNLV professor emeritus of art, is featured in a new book, "Rita Deanin Abbey: Rio Grande Series."

Distributed by the University of Washington Press, the book is available at several local bookstores, including the UNLV Bookstore.

"The landscape of the Southwest -- its deserts and rivers -- has been an inspiration and point of departure for Rita Deanin Abbey's art and evolving visual perceptions," according to the description provided in the brochure from the University of Washington Press. "She has captured the energy of the space, forms, and mystifying characteristics of the desert in her abstract compositions. The color, line, and texture that recreate the surroundings and the motion of the river in the `Rio Grande Series' speak of personal creative sources and Abbey's reverence for nature's complexity."

The book includes a foreword by poet William L. Fox, an essay on the Rio Grande by historian Marc Simmons, and a critique by Katherine Plake Hough, director of collections and exhibitions at the Palms Springs Desert Museum, of the 32 monotypes of the "Rio Grande Series."

Abbey is an acclaimed artist who has had numerous exhibitions of her works and has won many awards. From 1965 to 1987, she taught drawing, painting and color theory at UNLV.

Abbey's previous books are "Rivertrip" and "Art and Geology: Expressive Aspects of the Desert," with writer G. William Fiero a former UNLV geoscience professor.