2022 Bighorn Rendezvous Artist – Jake Gaedtke

Jake has been a full-time professional artist for the past 23 years. He was a Founding Member, Board Member, and President of the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters which disbanded in 2019. He had a career in graphic design for many years before becoming a professional artist. He studied extensively with the master landscape painters Jay Moore and Matt Smith. Jake has traveled extensively throughout the country painting in various locations, from the coast to the desert to the mountains including the Grand Canyon. Jake lived and worked in Colorado for 38 years and now lives with his wife in Bozeman, Montana.

“My purpose as an artist is to share my vision and experience of the natural world and its many marvels. This is accomplished in the form of painted and/or sketched field studies as my main source of reference which I then use to create larger studio paintings. In both my field studies and my studio paintings, I invite the observer to journey with me into a world of total sensory awareness of the countless wonders and manifold expressions of nature.”