Aspen Artist Cindy Rogers Dies at 65 After 8-Month Cancer Battle

What does it cost to keep a creative spirit alive in a town that’s always changing? For Cindy Rogers, who died on April 24, 2026, the price was paid in sun-bleached afternoons, early mornings on the mountain, and the relentless, joyful labor of making things. She was sixty-five. She grew up chasing the sun from Tahoe to the Bahamas, but she found her true north in the Roaring Fork Valley, where she became a fixture of the local art scene, a skilled chef, and a woman whose life was as textured as the encaustic paintings she left behind.

If you walked past her booth at the Aspen Saturday Market over the last fifteen years, you’d have seen bright acrylics on flexible Mylar, layered and luminous, catching the high-altitude light. She didn’t just hang art there; she lived it. Between her tiny garage apartment and the Art Department, she was a constant presence, facilitating raucous Life Drawing sessions that art students still remember fondly. She worked at least three jobs to pay for her education, a fact that speaks to a grit you don’t always associate with the polished image of the valley’s artistic elite. She graduated with a BFA in Medical Illustration from California State University, Long Beach, in as a Master Printer, she assisted blue-chip artists, printing their work with a precision that demanded both technical skill and an intuitive understanding of the artist’s soul.

"She said, 'art is an inner journey to your soul and the struggles we go through to get there'," the obituary notes, and you can feel that struggle in the layers of wax and pigment she applied. Her work, available now at Treedogpress.com, reflects a deep connection to human anatomy and the Western landscape, influenced by the Upper Roaring Fork Valley that became her home.

But Cindy wasn’t just an artist. She was a chef who honed her skills working atop Aspen Mountain at Bonnie’s, where she learned the rhythm of a professional kitchen. She went on to publish "Collections from an Aspen Chef," a book of dairy-free, gluten-free recipes dedicated to her brother David, who predeceased her. The book stands as proof of her belief that food, like art, is a way to nurture and protect. "Gardens are associated with an earthly paradise," she wrote, "a meadow of richness perfected and protected from outside contamination, a place where matters of the heart could be cultivated, nurtured and safe."

That sense of sanctuary extended to her time as a landscaper, where her deep knowledge of horticulture allowed her to curate spaces that felt both wild and intentional. She was a true Renaissance woman, strong-willed and adventurous, who spent her days hiking the deserts of Utah and her nights skinning up local peaks for tele-skiing. She served as the glue connecting artists in college and friends in the valley, a genuine friend who was always willing to listen, always willing to share a recipe or a story.

Her battle with aggressive cancer lasted eight months, a final challenge in a life defined by overcoming obstacles. But her legacy isn’t just in her art or her cooking; it’s in the way she made people feel seen. Her work will be available one last time at the Aspen Thrift Store art sale in August, a final offering of her vibrant, complex spirit.

The air in Aspen still holds the scent of pine and wax, the memory of her laughter echoing off the mountains she loved so dearly.