Rounds' venture into watercolor and LDS art was one of circumstance and, he hints, providence. After graduating from the University of Utah in 1977, he decided to pursue a full-time career as a painter immediately, despite all the warnings he had received from various acquaintances that he would never be able to earn a decent living. His wife, Nancy, the practical one in the marriage, the manager of Team Rounds, sat down and calculated that her husband would have to sell three or four paintings a day to make it financially. At the time, he was selling his paintings for $25, including the frame, which amounted to a $15 profit.

Rounds, who was trained primarily as an oil painter, decided "I couldn't do three paintings a day in oil (they don't dry fast enough, for one thing). I tried. I started doing watercolors just because I could sit on location and do two or three day. At night I'd go home and work on oils. I did watercolors so I could make a living. But the more I did, the better I got, and I started enjoying it. I started doing things with watercolors that hadn't been done before. I experimented with washes and papers. I knew the techniques before I knew the words for them."

In 1979, Rounds heard his calling, so to speak. He had a dream — he won't divulge its details — that sent him on the road and changed the direction of his career.

Rounds, his three children and Nancy, who was pregnant, piled into a tiny camper-pickup truck and spent a month driving to and from New York without air conditioning, stopping at LDS historical sites along the way.

"I found the paintings," he says.

'What I live for'

A couple of years later, Rounds decided he had to make a decision about the direction of his career. He laid out two choices for Nancy: He could make good money by pursuing American historical scenes and Western art, which was becoming increasingly popular, or he could follow his heart and paint Mormon themes and eke out a living. They chose the latter.

Rounds began traveling regularly in search of LDS historical sites and paintings. Previously, he had always painted on location, but for practical reasons he began using a camera to record images that he could refer to back in his studio. After each trip, Rounds searches through hundreds of photographs to find a painting, and when he is ready for new material the family hits the road again.

They traveled to New York four more times. They spent four months in England. They spent three months in Hawaii, camping out on the beach for part of the time to save money. While old-timers showed Rounds old church sites around the island, his family hung out on the beach.

"It got old," says Nancy. "We had rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And we got lice."

They spent one summer driving around Utah in a motor home, again with no air conditioning — "Such a miserable trip," says Nancy. Their travels also have taken them to Atlanta, France, the West Indies, Mexico and Jerusalem.