Artists Statement/Bio

Stating that “I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t involved with drawing or painting from childhood to present.” Bechtold has lived in the in the Chicago area after leaving Peoria, Illinois to attend The American Academy of Art at age eighteen and then beginning a career as an Illustrator. Feeling that something was missing in this journey he turned to painting and studies at the School Of The Art Institute of Chicago. After painting became his full-time passion he studied with Wolf Kahn through the Santa Fe Institute Of Fine Art Masters Program, Santa Fe, New Mexico. That experience is responsible for moving painting passion to obsession and helps fuel his creative energy today.

Over years Rodger Bechtold enjoys a reputation as a prominent landscape painter adding to the dialog of of contemporary painting with a dynamic color language effortless brushwork, all connected by place and time.

His works, some monumental in size, have been seen in solo and featured exhibitions in museums and prominent galleries as well as public and private collections across the United States. Also they have been included in periodicals and books namely:

The Artist and the American Landscape: Two Centuries of American Landscape Painting, by John Driscoll, Director of the Babcock Gallery, New York, NY, Landscape Painting: Essential Concepts and Techniques for Plein Air and Studio Practice, by Mitchell Albala, 100 Artists of the Midwest by E. Ashley Rooney.

Rodger Bechtold and his wife, botanical illustrator Glory Bechtold, split time living and working near Chicago and Washington Island, Door County, Wisconsin.