| Roger Medearis | |
| Birth Date: | 6 March 1920 |
| Birth Place: | Fayette, Missouri |
| Death Place: | San Marino, California |
| Nationality: | American |
| Known For: | egg tempera painting |
| Training: | Kansas City Art Institute |
| Movement: | Regionalist painter |
| Notable Works: | Godly Susan |
Roger Medearis (March 6, 1920 – July 5, 2001) was an American Regionalist painter.[1]
He was a student of Thomas Hart Benton while at the Kansas City Art Institute in the late 1930s and took up the technique of egg tempera painting, a rediscovered medium popular with Regionalists. Benton introduced Medearis to the Associated American Artists Gallery in New York City, from which he sold a portrait of his grandmother, Godly Susan, now in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.[2]
After World War II, Regionalist art fell out of fashion, replaced by Abstract Expressionism. Unable to sell his works, Medearis stopped painting. In 1966, Philip Desind, a Maryland art dealer, discovered Medearis' work and encouraged him to return to painting. Medearis painted new works until his death in 2001.[2]
Medearis' paintings and lithographs can be found in the collections of the Butler Institute of American Art, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. He also has a painting hanging next to one of Thomas Hart Benton at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.[2] His later years were spent in San Marino with his wife and children.