Russell Chatham was born in San Francisco on October 27, 1939. He lived in the city until 1949 when his family moved to San Anselmo, where he spent the next twelve years. For the following eleven years, he worked and lived in Marshall, San Rafael, San Anselmo, Black Point, Bolinas, and Nicasio, earning his living as a sign painter and cabinetmaker slash carpenter. In the spring of 1972 he moved to Livingston, Montana. As a painter and author, Chatham is self-taught. He is the grandson of the great landscape painter Gottardo Piazzoni.

He began exhibiting formally in 1958, and since then has had nearly four hundred one man shows at museums, art centers, private galleries, schools, colleges and universities not only throughout the west in places like Sun Valley, Aspen, Santa Fe and Denver, but also in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, San Francisco and Los Angeles. His work has also been exhibited in Europe and Asia. Chatham began printmaking in 1980, and today is regarded as one of the world’s foremost lithographers. Because of his work in lithography, which he developed in order to have something for those of ordinary means, it is estimated Chatham’s original prints are in the hands of at least thirty thousand individuals.

Publications about Chatham include a catalogue called One Hundred Paintings, and another about his original lithographs called The Missouri Headwaters. Chatham has been profiled in Esquire, Southwest Art, People, U.S. Art, Antiques and Fine Art, Architectural Digest, Smart, The Denver Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, The Associated Press, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, and Fresh Air, PBS, and CBS Sunday Morning.

Chatham’s writing includes hundreds of articles, short stories, essays and reviews about fly fishing, bird hunting and conservation as well as a number of pieces on food and wine. Since 1967 his work has appeared in Esquire, Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic, Men’s Journal, Outside, Sports Afield, Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Fly Fisherman, Fly Rod and Reel, as well as in dozens of newspapers and smaller specialty magazines. His books include The Angler’s Coast, Silent Seasons, and Dark Waters. Several new books are in progress. He is the founder and publisher of Clark City Press, which, since 1989, has published nearly forty books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, art, photography, and children’s classics, all of which have given the Livingston based company a sound national reputation.

In 1995, Chatham conceived and designed a restaurant. Chatham’s Livingston Bar & Grille was built during the first ten and a half months of 1996, opening on November 15th of that year. Having enjoyed a reputation under Chatham’s management as one of the Rocky Mountain region’s premier dining establishments for ten years, the restaurant has now been sold.

Among Chatham’s private painting collectors are authors Peter Matthiessen, the late David Halberstam, Jim Harrison, Dan Gerber, Thomas McGuane, the late James Crumley, Richard Ford, Rick Bass, the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Carl Hiaasen, and the late Richard Brautigan; editors and publishers, Jann Wenner, the late Seymour Lawrence, and Terry McDonell; New York restaurateur Elaine Kaufman; former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent; art critic Robert Hughes; media correspondents Tom Brokaw, the late Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, Van Gordon Sauter, and the late Charles Kuralt; entrepreneurs Yvon Chouinard, Robert Pittman, Bruce Dunlevie, Robert Emery, Ranny Draper, Thomas J. Stewart, Kendrick R. Wilson, III, Don Kane, Stephen B. Burke, Eric Dillon, Randall Pittman, Thomas Siebel, Paul Allen, and William Randolph Hearst, III; chef Mario Batali; entertainment personalities Michael Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard, Jeff Bridges, the late Sydney Pollack, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sean Connery, Angelica Huston, Jimmy Buffet, Dave Grusin, Don Henley, Glenn Frye, Dennis and Randy Quaid, Meg Ryan, the late Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Harry Dean Stanton, Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Ali MacGraw, Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, and Harrison Ford.

Russell Chatham lives in Livingston, Montana.