Many art students at Youngstown State University were influenced by the work and the guidance of professor emeritus Russell Maddick.
Others discovered his abstract paintings through exhibitions throughout the region.
Maddick will concentrate on work created since he retired from full-time teaching in '99 in a new exhibition opening Saturday at the Butler Institute of American Art Trumbull Branch in Howland.
Butler Director Louis Zona said, ''I always tease Russ that he is the best painter in Ohio. I always felt he had extraordinary ability. He's never shown his work at the Trumbull facility, and I always felt his work would be shown to it best advantage in this space. It's the perfect exhibition for that space.
''I've been a fan for a long time, and he has a lot of fans in the area.''
Maddick said the 20-plus pieces on display were painted since 2000. Some were created in Chicago, when he was commuting back to YSU to teach part-time at the beginning of the decade.
Others were painted at his studio in Bonita Springs, Fla., where he spends half the year, and the rest were created at his home and studio just over the border in in New Bedford, Pa.
Geography has its conscious and subconscious impact on the work, Maddick said, but his approach is the same regardless of where it's created.
''I want the work to have its own meaning and force people to try to understand what is happening in the process instead of some recognizable imagery that is clear immediately and then from that point there is nothing left (to discover),'' Maddick said. ''I think in terms of my process, I don't try to visualize the final appearance of the work. I'm open to discovery as I'm working.''
Zona, who has one of Maddick's large canvases prominently displayed in his living room, said he can see an evolution from Maddick's earlier, more minimalistic abstractions to the pieces he's creating today.
''The recent work is very complex in contrast to that,'' Zona said. ''It's rather unpredictable and to a degree light-hearted.''
Maddick said he is looking forward to seeing how his paintings look in the Howland gallery.
''It's a beautiful, neutral space that has very large wall areas and is psychologically very open, so it can accommodate almost any kind of approach,'' he said. ''It's very suitable to my work, which has a very strong interest in dynamic color and shape activity.''