Rodger Bechtold

The Midwest is close to my heart; after all, it’s the place where I’ve lived all my life. The heartland of this country possesses such uncomplicated and straightforward beauty. This simplicity of the these ever changing vistas resonates with me the way music does.

Beginning a painting from the initial inspiration is one thing, but to carry that inspiration through an evolution of risk and change is quite another. I must work until that painting stands alone and finally has something to say.

Taking “cues” from nature, my color choices have become intuitive, a subconscious response to what I see – true too for my studio work, where there is more latitude for experimentation and invention. I want to layer the painting with interest so a viewer can relate to the time and place, color relationships, abstraction, and brush work, and see this as the largest statement possible contributing to the ongoing discourse of contemporary painting. I paint with an orchestration of form and color that makes the separation between representation and abstraction nearly indistinct.

Caught up in an ever-hyper-busy-world, we seem to be drifting away from something very precious, a bond with the land that’s ages old. My hope is that my painting might somehow rekindle an interest in what wonder surrounds us every day and yet goes unnoticed.