SHELBURNE -- Warren Kimble never touches oil paint. It never drys.

What the country's best-known contemporary folk artist has touched in more than 100 works spanning his career is featured in the Vermonter's first major museum retrospective, "Warren Kimble's America."

His ubiquitous cows, barns, flags, landscapes and domestic animals are well suited for the lower level of the Shelburne Museum's Round Barn.

"It's very special," said Kimble, who lives in Brandon, Vt. "I'm very honored and excited. It's just over the top for the artist. A lot has happened to me in the last 15, maybe 16, 17 years. This is kind of the pinnacle. It's my home base. It's a folk-art museum, the best in the country as far as I'm concerned. It's Vermont. Where I'm living. Who I am. All of that."

WIDOWS OF WAR

Kimble's early paintings show a different facet of the man, as does his most recent series, "Widows of War," inspired by a retreat at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vt. Every year, he goes there to play, experiment and interact with 50 visual artists and writers. After 40 years of "legalized gambling" in the antiques business, he acquired dress forms he had contemplated folking up.

"I came back from dinner one night and turned on my radio. I was thinking about working on a painting. Hearing two more soldiers were killed in Iraq, I looked and here's this mannequin sitting (by) the window. I thought, this is the person at home. This is the person standing in front of the window thinking where do I go next? This is my present. Where is my future?"

Thinking about loss, Kimble created a feminine iconography of war, any war, using the mannequins, windows, clothespins, garden motifs and hand prints.

"It went from there. I was there the next three weeks. I came back home. I continued to work on it."

"Widows of War" is comprised of 35 pieces, the latest a mannequin dressed in barbed wire.

BIG-BODIED BOVINES

Though he had paint with him at the time, he hit upon the idea of ripping up canvas and adorning it with a limited palette of black and white with a spot of red every once in a while. The colors represent the darkness and bright side of war, if there is any.

"Some have worked, and some have not worked."

Kimble remembers having pencils and crayons as a child just like every kid. He was just a little more obsessive. He made things out of paper and painted holiday scenes in neighbors' windows for $5 to buy more art supplies and candy.

If one doesn't remember Kimble's name, his black-and-white cows register at a glance. His big-bodied bovines with small heads and short legs were inspired by 19th-century paintings of humongous cows bred for optimum meat production. One of his works, dubbed "Kissing Cows," have flanks depicting the outline of the state of Vermont.