NORMAL - When President Barack Obama sups in the Oval Office's private dining room, the work of Bloomington artist Harold Gregor bears silent witness.

About 60 inches by 82 inches of Gregor's artistry, to be precise.

The piece, "Illinois Landscape #120," was created 17 years ago - around the time that Obama's Secretary of State's spouse was dining in the same space.

The painting is on loan, complete with contractual obligations and other red tape, including a special dispensation for Gregor's alive-and-well status.

Normally, only works by dead artists are allowed to be hung in the White House. But Obama requested that the piece, formerly on display in his senator's office, travel with him to his new abode.

Where the President has to make do with "just" those 60-by-82 inches of Illinois landscape, area Gregor fans are now the recipients of many more inches of mastery from the dean of B-N painters.

The occasion: "Radiant Plains," the summer show in Illinois State University's University Galleries, curated by galleries director Barry Blinderman. It's on view through Sept. 13, with a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday (as the Sugar Creek Arts Festival unfolds outside on the quad - go ahead, make a day of it).

Amazingly, it's the 79-year-old Gregor's first full-blown B-N solo exhibit in his 35-odd years living, teaching and painting here.

For an artist whose work resides everywhere from the Art Institute of Chicago to that city's McCormick Convention Center (via his famously massive 5-feet-by-35-feet panorama), it may seem strange that it's taken this long.

What may strike some longtime acquaintances of Gregor's Illinois landscapes as even stranger is the fact these new works are not your father's Gregor paintings, or even, perhaps, Obama's.

One step into the gallery and this new direction literally explodes across the walls, per Blinderman's dramatic presentation.

As Gregorphiles know, his trademark works are inspired by photos snapped from on high, via plane, and at ground level, via passing auto - all as empirical evidence for his oil-and-acrylic renderings.

But, as Blinderman puts it, "He has virtually jettisoned the photographic reference that has characterized his work since the 1970s." The new pieces are "non-realist, expressionistic compositions with bold, sinuous outlines."

The result: "They look like they come from dreams - the photographic sources are obviated, and these are like brand new things."

Why the dramatic shift from empirical to expressionist? It occurred by accident. Literally, as Gregor was painting on a hilltop during a trip to Italy, circa 2004.

"I was climbing up a big path," he recalls. "And I slipped on a stone, landed on my right arm and broke my wrist. 'Well, oh, (bleep),' I said, and then dumbly pushed it all back together again," thereby aggravating the injury.

With his painting arm out of commission for six months, Gregor couldn't put his creative impulses on hold. So he forced himself to paint with his left hand.

"It was really clumsy at first. But after about three or four months, they began to look like something. It was different and crude, but in a lot ways there was interest to it."

Forced as a leftie "to poke and push" more than brush, the resulting "big blobs of color" generated an energy that stimulated Gregor - to the point that, after his right hand healed, he decided to create large-scale right-handed renderings of his small left-handed watercolors, dubbed, aptly, "Vibrascapes."

Craving a new direction in his work, he found what he was looking for, in spades - even if, he notes, some of his long-time admirers were a bit disoriented by the expressionistic explosion of vibrant colors and boldly administered curves.

Passing by Gregor's downtown studio a year or so ago, Blinderman says his eye was hooked by the new direction in the artist's work.

When he discovered later that Gregor turns 80 this year, "Then it was a done deal - I had to do a show."

The subject is a little wary over the latter angle, noting with a chuckle, "I'd like to play that down - this isn't a last hurrah."

Even so, one suspects he'll be hearing plenty of first hurrahs over the summer's course as his "accidental" career turn wins over a new legion of admirers.

"I do think this is one of the most significant shows of his work - period," says Blinderman.

At a glance

What: "Radiant Plains: Recent Paintings and Watercolors by Harold Gregor"

When: Noon to 4 p.m. Mon.-Sat., through Sept. 13

Where: University Galleries at Illinois State University

Cost: Free

Information: (309) 438-5487

Gregorscapes

Born: Sept. 10, 1929, in Detroit

Education: Wayne State University, B.S., 1951; Michigan State University, M.S., 1953; Ohio State University, Ph.D, 1960

Teaching history: 1970-1995, Illinois State University

Current title: Distinguished professor of art, emeritus and adjunct, ISU

Studio: 311½ N. Main St., Bloomington

Public commissions: State of Illinois Appellate Court Building, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Central Illinois Regional Airport, Illinois State Library in Springfield, McCormick Convention Center in Chicago

Collections (sampling): Art Institute of Chicago, Filipacchi Collection in Paris, Chemical Bank in London, Hallmark Corp. in Kansas City.

Current honor: His "Illinois Landscape #120" hangs in the Oval Office Private Dining Room at the White House, at President Barack Obama's request.