Rodger Bechtold was born in 1945 in Michigan, raised in central Illinois and has lived in and around Chicago since age eighteen. Rodger and his wife, botanical illustrator Glory Bechtold have been Bull Valley residents since the 1980s and typically spend months every year on Washington Island in Door County where they have a second home and artist studio. Rodger nurtured his interests in the visual arts at the American Academy of Art, Chicago and the School of The Art institute of Chicago. Involved in commercial art illustration for many years he abandoned that pursuit some thirty years ago in favor of painting landscapes full time.

What really ignited this passion for painting was his exposure to mentor Wolf Kahn through the Santa Fe Institute of Fine Art, New Mexico as part of the Masters Art Program. Over time Bechtold has built a solid reputation for being a major contributor to the on-going dialog in contemporary landscape painting in the Midwest and beyond.

His paintings, 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. Rodger’s work has been included and discussed in the following books:

• 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 Roone