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Otto Donald Rogers

Otto Rogers, or Don, as he is called by friends, is a well-known Canadian artist. He was born in 1935 and raised on a farm near Kerrobert, Saskatchewan. As a child, he was profoundly affected by the prairie landscape and would take two solitary walks each day: the first in the early morning to a one-room school, and the second before dinner or at sunset to gather animals from the pasture. During those walks, his attention was drawn to the prairie horizon, where the land meets the sky. The colour and form he experienced were intoxicating:

During the daily walks I felt often this most intense contradiction, to be near and yet to be far. Overhead the birds were in constant motion—they had wings. In all seasons by instinct, these wings carried them to their nest. I wondered if the mind and heart had wings or if those great centres in our being were our wings.1

Mr. Rogers took an art class from Saskatoon painter Wynona Mulcaster when he was in teacher’s college in Saskatoon in 1952. She was dazzled by his talent, giving him a one-person show and encouraging him to pursue a studio art program at the University of Wisconsin. He later obtained his Master’s degree in Fine Arts and painted in New York before beginning a career at the University of Saskatchewan in 1959 that would last 29 years.

The following year he saw an important turning point in his life: he became a member of the Baha'i Faith, the teachings of which inculcated principles that have not only guided his life but heavily informed his work as well. The concept of unity in diversity is central to both his faith and art: “The key is unity through diversity. Without diversity, you can’t create. You’d just have uniformity, like a tile pattern.”2

Mr. Rogers has found that the creation of art serves as both supplication and tribute to God. His dedication to the Baha'i Faith led him to teaching many of the university students who were a part of the wave of people in Saskatchewan who became Baha'is during the 1960s and 70s. He was head of the Department of Art at the University of Saskatchewan when, in 1988, he was called to serve at the International Teaching Centre at the Baha'i World Centre in Haifa, Israel. So, he and his wife, Barbara, moved to Haifa and lived there for 10 years.

Because of the demands on his time from service to the Baha'i community while in Haifa, he had only three shows in North America, and his art practice was limited to weekends. Yet, he feels that the diverse and powerful landscape of Israel built in him a unique potential that, while deferred because of time constraints, would be realized upon his return to Canada. “I had a lot of images in me that didn't have a chance to get out,”3 he says. His service in Israel also gave him the rare opportunity to travel to Russia, where he met with formerly outlawed Abstractionists and was given a personal tour of the vaults of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, where he was able to better study the works of such artists as Kandinsky and Malevich.

Among those of international renown who have held the work of Mr. Rogers very highly are Clement Greenberg, the New York art critic, and Sir Anthony Caro, a British artist who invited him to be a quest artist at two of Sir Anthony’s workshops—one in upstate New York and one in Spain.

After finishing their terms of service at the Baha'i World Centre, Otto and Barbara Rogers settled near Milford, Ontario, where Mr. Rogers works in a studio designed by his son-in-law, Toronto architect Siamak Hariri. Since his return to Canada in 1998, there have been six exhibitions of his work: two in Vancouver, two in Calgary, one in Saskatoon, and one in Toronto. He creates works that reflects his belief that art should be both beautiful and soul-stirring, “our human response to a voice from on high.”4 His works can be found in some 1500 collections, public, corporate, and private, in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia.

  1. Otto Rogers, "Reflections on the Spiritual Quest of the Artist," from Otto Rogers: New Paintings and Sculpture 1977-78, exhibition catalogue by Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge: Southern Alberta Art Gallery, 1978), p. 7.
  2. From interview with Otto Rogers by Sheila Robertson, printed in the Star Phoenix, Saskatoon, 17 November 2001.
  3. Ibid.
  4. From interview with Otto Rogers by Sheila Robertson, printed in the Star Phoenix, Saskatoon, November 1992.