Jordan Pehler is a Billings-based artist and educator. He has served as Education Director at the WaterWorks Art Museum in Miles City, Montana, and as Museum Art Educator at the Yellowstone Art Museum. He now teaches with Billings Public Schools, where he continues to inspire and mentor his students.

Outside the classroom, Jordan draws inspiration from Montana’s vast landscapes. He spends much of his free time exploring rivers and streams with a fly rod, hiking across the state’s expansive public lands, or cultivating his garden. These experiences of rhythm, stillness, and quiet are often echoed in his artistic process.

Working primarily in encaustic—a medium that fuses beeswax with oil pigment—Pehler builds layered, semi-translucent surfaces that invite viewers into spaces of mystery and reflection. The interplay of molten wax and paint produces obscured yet evocative images, suspended between the familiar and the elusive. He was drawn to encaustic for its sculptural quality and supple, tactile surface, which allowed him to balance material experimentation with thoughtful depth.