Kathleen Bechtel grew up in Comstock Park, Michigan, near Grand Rapids.  She attended Kendall School of Design and majored in Illustration.  Kathleen has studied with various workshop instructors that she admires and is part of a plein air painting group in her area.  She feels that art is a form of communication and that it reflects the things that move the artist.  “People will know me through my paintings.  My paintings will speak to people I will never see or know.  I am profoundly affected by this.”  Kathleen has exhibited in numerous group and one person shows and received many awards.  Her paintings, in both oil and pastel, portray a variety of subject matter.  She continues to create landscape, still-life, and figurative works from her home in Wyoming, Michigan.