Head and shoulders image of Otto (Don) Rogers, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History.

Bio/Historical Note: Otto Donald (Don) Rogers was born on 19 December 1935 in Kerrobert, Saskatchewan, and grew up on a farm near Kelfield, Saskatchewan. He attended high school in Kindersley, and then studied at the Saskatoon Teachers' College from 1952 to 1953. He took an art class with Wynona Mulcaster, who was impressed by his talent and encouraged Rogers to pursue a career in art. Mulcaster introduced him to cubism, a style he was to adopt for himself.. Rogers attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1954 to 1959. In 1955 he obtained a scholarship from the Saskatchewan Arts Board that let him attend the Emma Lake Artist's Workshop led by Jack Shadbolt. He obtained a BSc in Art Education in 1958 and an MSc in Fine Art in 1959. After graduating from university Rogers spent a few months in New York City. He then joined the faculty of the arts department of the University of Saskatchewan, where he taught from 1959 to 1988.His student Robert Christie remembers Rogers as a charismatic teacher. He and the structurist Eli Bornstein dominated the department. Another student said he was "a fantastic mentor, a task master with very high standards." He helped rejuvenate the Emma Lake Artist's Workshops between 1971 and 1987. In the early 1970s Rogers spent three months working in Iceland. In 1973 he became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. From 1973 to 1978 Rogers was head of the university's art department. The sculptor Anthony Caro asked Rogers to participate in his Triangle workshop in New York in 1984, and in a second Triangle workshop in Barcelona in 1987. The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art purchased three of Rogers' sculptural reliefs. In 1998 Rogers returned to Canada and settled in Milford in Prince Edward County, Ontario. Rogers died on 28 April 2019 in Picton, Ontario.