Rodger Bechtold & Mary Jo O’Gara: A sense of place brings together over forty vivid landscape paintings that celebrate the beauty, rhythm, and atmosphere of the American Midwest. On view in our Glencoe gallery through December 31st, the exhibition highlights two artists who, through distinct yet complementary approaches, capture the emotional and physical essence of the landscapes that surround them. Their works invite viewers to pause and rediscover the quiet poetry of familiar spaces — fields, barns, skies, and horizons transformed through color and form.

For nearly four decades, Rodger Bechtold has explored the Midwestern landscape through an expressive, painterly language that balances abstraction and representation. His compositions radiate energy and depth, marked by luminous tones and confident brushwork that seem to dissolve boundaries between the seen and the felt. Bechtold’s paintings convey not only the outward beauty of nature but also an inner sense of openness and contemplation. His landscapes, alive with motion and atmosphere, offer viewers a chance to experience the vastness and serenity of the region anew.

In contrast, Mary Jo O’Gara’s paintings evoke a gentle quietness through their careful layering of color, texture, and light. Her imagery — barns, open fields, and rural vistas — carries a sense of timelessness and warmth, reflecting both memory and presence. Stripped of excess detail yet rich in nuance, O’Gara’s works channel the emotional connections that bind people to place. Together, Bechtold and O’Gara present a deeply personal yet universal vision of the Midwest: a landscape defined not only by its geography, but by the artists’ enduring relationship to its spirit and light.