Rodger Bechtold

Like most people, I feel a sense of calm and tranquility in the presence of nature. It often takes me away from a sometimes troubled and worrisome world.

Based on direct observation, recollection and some invention, I seek to describe the grandeur in the commonplace. I create landscape paintings that have a feeling of spaciousness beyond the limits of the canvas, charged with color, expressed with energy and seemingly effortless brushwork. Most of all I'm interested in communicating what it feels like to be in nature.

In the end, painting is much like fishing. Even with the best of intentions it's always unpredictable, results are never certain, but the time is always well spent.

-Rodger Bechtold

Exuberant color and painterly interpretations of place and moment are the trademarks of Rodger Bechtold’s midwestern scenes. An accomplished landscape painter for over40 years, Rodger Bechtold studied art at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition, he studied with well-known painter, Wolf Kahn while attending The Masters Art Program at the Santa Fe Institute of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM.

Bechtold’s paintings have been featured in museum exhibitions and are included in public and private collections across the United States. He and and his wife, botanical illustrator Glory Bechtold, live and work near Chicago, IL and in Door County Wisconsin.

Selected Public Collections: Department of the Air Force, Museum Branch, Washington, DC; Weidner Center for the Performing Arts, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay; Northern Trust Bank, Milwaukee, WI; Northern Trust Bank, Denver, CO; The Greenbrier, acquisition by Carlton Varney, White Sulphur Springs, WV; Arthur Andersen, Washington, D.C.; Charles Wm. Foster & Associates, Ltd., Chicago, IL; Hollister, Inc., Libertyville, IL; Heritage Insurance, Sheboygan, WI