They call him the butterfly man.

In a cluttered corner of his aging farm house east of Ottawa University, Bill Howe works in precise, tiny brush strokes to recreate the colorful insects he’s been chasing since he was a child.

“I’ve been painting butterflies since I was 11 years old, and now I’m 74,” Howe said. “I stand at my desk and paint hour after hour.”

His passion has metamorphosized into more than a boyhood hobby.

He illustrated and edited “Butterflies of North America,” the out-of-print, 1975 Doubleday publication still considered by professionals and amateurs alike to be the pre-eminent North American butterfly book. He wrote and illustrated “Our Butterflies and Moths” and has contributed to two other books.

His paintings hang at the Smithsonian Institute, the Los Angeles County Museum and other museums across the country. They also grace walls closer to home: the corridors of Kansas University’s Snow Hall, the new Ottawa visitor’s center and numerous private homes.

This month, 16 of Howe’s paintings are on display in the basement of the Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vt.

Monarchs, swallowtails and sulfurs radiate in brilliant hues from his canvasses. Vivid colors and dramatic shadows often give his work a futuristic — he describes it as surreal — look. His butterflies appear to have been plucked straight from nature and flattened into paintings, so accurate is their detail.

That’s because he only paints from specimens, never from photographs. His personal butterfly collection — which fills stacks of wooden boxes in nooks and crannies of his home — numbers near 10,000. Something of a lepidopterist (an entomologist who specializes in butterflies and moths) in his own right, Howe has netted the specimens himself on butterfly hunts through the decades.

He revels in the space where art and science meet but dares not venture too far into the scholarly realm.

“The scientific problems I leave to the experts. Sitting under a microscope in an office doesn’t appeal to me,” Howe said. “I don’t profess to be a professional entomologist. What I’ve done has kept me busy.”

Like fishing

Busy might be an understatement. On Jan. 7, Howe will embark on his 80th trip to Mexico to collect butterflies. About 800 butterfly specimens make the return journey to the states each time, Howe said.

His collection also is brimming with domestic species that he’s collected during trips throughout the United States. Colorado is his favorite hunting spot.

Catching the winged creatures can be a challenge.

“Sometimes they’re all out there ready for you. You can’t miss,” Howe said. “It’s like fishing: Sometimes you get it; sometimes you don’t.”

But as he writes in his book, “Our Butterflies and Moths,” he finds in butterfly collecting “the same pleasures that the fisherman enjoys with his rod and reel, that the gardener enjoys when he watches his plants grow, or that the artist discovers with his canvas and paint as he attempts to depict the fleeting mood of a cloud against an azure sky.”

Howe’s interest in butterflies was nurtured by his father, Edwin Walter Howe, an entomologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The elder Howe brought home a screen of dill caterpillars and left it on the dining room table when Howe was 5 years old.

“One day, the caterpillars turned into chrysalis. When one emerged, I was just spellbound,” Howe said.

Later, Howe tagged along with his dad in Tennessee, helping gather insects for study.

“I was already an astute collector,” Howe said of his skills at age 11. “I could catch a wasp and get it to the cyanide jar without it stinging me.”

Unexpected perks

It was that same year Howe began painting the insect he was most smitten with: the butterfly.

In 1942, the California native and his family moved to Ottawa, where he graduated in 1951 with a biology degree from Ottawa University. He went on to study at the Kansas City Art Institute, where he refined his watercolor techniques. These days, he has abandoned watercolors for acrylics.

Each of his creations starts with a butterfly, wings outspread and frozen in time. Poised at his corner desk, the rotund, gray-haired artist with thick fingers sketches the specimen in the finest detail and then fills in the dark lines and shadows with tiny strokes of black paint.

Then comes the color — loads of it. Those unfamiliar with the butterflies that call Kansas home during their brief lives might be surprised to see the size and showiness of the state’s native species. Howe’s paintings pay homage to that diversity. Some showcase a single variety; the largest depict spectacular migration scenes.

Prints of more than a half dozen of his paintings hang outside KU professor emeritus of entomology Charles Michener’s office in Snow Hall.

“The accuracy is very good,” Michener said. “To paint requires great patience. You mess it up, and you start over. So I think that’s very much to his credit.”

Floyd and June Preston, a retired Lawrence couple whose butterfly collection contains some 45,000 to 46,000 specimens, are a frequent source for Howe, who borrows butterflies as points of reference for his paintings.

“He’s a remarkable individual as far as his talent goes. His book on the âÂÂ’Butterflies of North America’ … I feel is far and away the best book that exists currently for identifying all butterflies of North America,” Floyd Preston said. “We have some of the prints from some of his paintings. These are some of the large, showy, tropical butterflies. They’re striking. They’re very outstanding.”

Though Howe frequently laments that the art business can be tough — he doesn’t sell paintings nearly as often as he’d like — he maintains his dedication to collecting and painting the often elusive butterfly.

“You take me out of butterfly art and I’m lost,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade my work for anything in the world. It has so many unexpected perks to it.”