Don Prechtal

Prechtel (1937- 2024) considers himself a general historical painter, though he also paints Civil War subjects and cops to his obsession with the West. “I’ve always been fascinated by it,” he says. “And shoot, I live in the West—90 miles from the ‘end’ of it.” His influences were artists from the 1930s and ’40s like John Clymer and Norman Rockwell, as well as earlier illustrator Howard Pyle.

Although interested in art since childhood and later choosing to attend a commercial art school, Prechtel didn’t get serious about art until the late 1960s. “I hung a painting at a gun show,” he recalls of the breakthrough moment, “and a gentleman came by and bought it—a young lawyer with not much money. One day I went to see him and asked, ‘Do you think you could find someone who could pay me a salary so I can paint?’ And he said, ‘Sure, I’ll do it.’ So for three years he did that.”

That was 1969, and the philanthropic attorney was John E. Jaqua, who helped form sportswear giant Nike and became a board member in 1968. “He donated money, time, expertise to many, many people in many different professions,” Prechtel says. The longtime arts patron died in 2009.

By the early 1970s Prechtel had become a founding member of the Northwest Rendezvous Group of Artists, and his career was taking off. Could he have done it without Jaqua’s help? “I had a long discussion with him about that,” the painter says. “He said, ‘You would have done it anyway.’” While the driven Prechtel might agree, he remains grateful for the support.

His typical painting regimen begins with “doodles, sketches and idea things.” If something strikes his fancy, he’ll bring in a model or models, take photographs, make sketches and then do color studies and a small painting “to see what it looks like and then go on to the bigger ones.”

Although he has been at this for 47 years, he notes, “I’m always learning. I’ll look at other people’s work and wonder how they got those colors, where they applied them, things like that. I have to keep thinking about what I’m doing.”