Rounds is famous around his house for his absentmindedness. He couldn't keep a set of keys until Nancy bought him a large green rubber spaceman and attached it to his key ring. "I've had the same set of keys for three years — a record," he says. "But I have lost it a few times."

"Al has a hard time with reality," says Nancy. "He's forgetful. It's exasperating. Sometimes I want to wring his neck."

Nancy handles logistics and finances; Al does one thing: paint. When they travel, she arranges for hotels, flights, car rentals and watches the map. Once, Al ventured on his own to Boston. Nancy sent him with written, step-by-step instructions. He arrived there without his driver's license and then got lost.

"I'll never go again without you," he told her.

This is one of Nancy's "Al" stories: When the family climbed in the car for its first cross-country painting trip to New York, Al turned to Nancy and said, "Which way do I go?"

"Whaddya mean?!" she said. "You go up Parleys Canyon. We're going east."

Says Nancy, "Al's this spaceman floating up in space, painting. Every once in a while I pull him down to Earth. I'm his reality check, I guess. Otherwise, he'd always stay up in space."

They met at a college dance. He had long hair and "dressed really weird, with lots of bright colors," says Nancy. "He stood out. He was painting a lot then. He was doing hard-edged abstract stuff, like a big red ball and a black line on white canvas. I didn't like it."

She introduced him to her LDS parents, this hippie from California who rode a motorcycle and said he wanted to be an artist. They hated him, of course. The first time they laid eyes on Rounds he was sans shoes and shirt. But they quickly warmed to him.

Paintings by the inch

Nancy and Al married in 1974 and began having babies — five in six years (later, they would adopt two more), even while he was still attending the University of Utah. They bought a house in Sandy, and he painted at the family's kitchen table, sometimes while bouncing a child on his knee. Later, he painted in the basement laundry room. They struggled to make ends meet. After Nancy gave birth to a third child, the hospital informed her that she could be released as soon as she made a $100 payment. Rounds did a few quick paintings at home, drove to Trolley Square and sold them, then called Nancy and told her, "I've got the hundred dollars; I'm coming to get you."