About W. Karl Steele

W. Karl Steele — born Willard Karl Steele — was a painter and a teacher of painters. He trained at the John Herron Art Academy in Indianapolis, and he painted in oils — almost always the country he knew: creeks and autumn hillsides, weathered barns, quiet coastlines.

Many were painted on the road — the landscapes and old roadside buildings he passed on the long drives to the churches where he performed his chalk art.

For years he led the art department at Wheaton College in Illinois, teaching a generation of students, and he kept painting throughout — carrying his craft between the classroom, the easel, and the chalk-art ministry that made his name.

Two of his landscape oils are held today by the Midwest Museum of American Art in Elkhart, Indiana. Many others have remained with the family — tended over the years by his daughter, Carolyn Streeter, and his granddaughters, Loril Garrett and Sheri Holman, who have kept safe not only the paintings but the memories and stories behind them.