Russell Chatham was born in San Francisco on October 27, 1939. He lived in the Bay Area until moving to Park County, Montana in the spring of 1972. As a painter and writer, Chatham is self-taught. Since 1958 he has had more than three hundred one man exhibitions. His work has been exhibited in England, France and Japan. Chatham began producing "original lithographs" in 1982, and today is considered one of the world's foremost lithographers. Publications about Chatham include a catalog of paintings called "100 Paintings", and another about his original lithographs called "The Missouri Headwaters". He 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, reviews, short stories and essays about fly fishing, bird hunting and conservation, as well as a number of pieces on food and wine. He is the founder and publisher of Clark City Press which since 1989 has published 28 books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, photography and children's classics, all of which have given the Livingston-based company a fine national and international reputation.

Private collectors include authors Peter Matthiessen, the late Eudora Welty, P.J. O'Rourke, David Halberstam, Curt Gentry, Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, William Hjortsberg, James Crumley, the late Richard Hugo, James Welch, Richard Ford, Rick Bass, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Carl Hiaasen, and the late Richard Brautigan; editors and publishers, Jann Wenner, the late Seymour Lawrence, Terry McDonell, and William Randolph Hearst, III; New York restaurateur Elaine Kaufman; cartoonists William Hamilton, Guindon, and the late B. Kliban; former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent; art critic Robert Hughes; media correspondents Tom Brokaw, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, Van Gordon Sauter, and the late Charles Kuralt; entertainment personalities Michael Keaton, Rip Torn, Elizabeth Ashley, Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard, the late Sam Peckinpah, the late Slim Pickens, Margot Kidder, Jeff Bridges, Peter and Jane Fonda, Sydney Pollack, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sean Connery, Harry Dean Stanton, Angelica Huston, Jimmy Buffet, Dave Grusin, Don Henley, Glenn Frye, Dennis and Randy Quaid, Meg Ryan, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Ali MacGraw, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, and Harrison Ford.