WAOW Artistry of the West
The WAOW Artistry is slowly being built to provide a page on our site to promote each artist* You can search by name, location or by subject matter to find an artist.
*Artist Source Acknowledgment: Content on these pages is shared with permission and is sourced from the featured member artist’s website and professional biography. All rights remain with the artist.
Sasha Phillips • Pennsylvania • waow
Sasha Phillips integrates three fields of professional endeavor. She is a high–level corporate lawyer, a professional artist, and developer of mental health through art wellness programs. Phillips is an oil painter. Her art focuses on visual storytelling, often tied to mental or emotional processing of trauma and social issues.
Cathy Toot • Montana • waow
Cathy Toot is an oil painter whose work captures the Western way of life and the animals of the American West with authenticity. She works in the realist tradition, depicting people engaged in ranch life, cowboy culture, wildlife and ranch animals. She began her artistic journey painting on gourds. She developed her work into a full-time professional fine art painting career.
Donna Cox • Colorado • waow
Donna Cox is an award-winning artist who has been drawing animals for as long as she can remember. Her meticulous attention to detail, as well as an ability to infuse that essential spark of life into her subjects, sets her work apart. Essentially a self-taught artist, working primarily in oil and pencil, her work reflects her love and respect for wildlife and the environment. She is an avid conservationist. Her background as a veterinary technician, as well as an enthusiasm for hunting and the outdoors, have greatly contributed to her ability to accurately portray animals in their natural habitat.
Sandhyaa Shetty • Texas • waow
Sandhyaa Shetty is a fine artist specializing in landscape paintings executed in oils and acrylics. She works in the traditions of the impressionists and plein air genres. Her earliest works reflected the beauty of rural India as she experienced it at her grandparents’ farm. She sought to paint the interaction of divine nature and emotional connection to the land with the intent to freeze it upon her canvas to preserve it forever. When her marriage brought her to the United States, the beautiful landscapes and people in her new home continue to inspire her work.
Bonnie Shields • Idaho • waow
Bonnie Shields is a well-known American Western artist known as, “The Tennessee Mule Artist.” She is especially famous for her detailed, humorous, and affectionate artwork focused on mules and donkeys. Her work stands out because it captures the personality and intelligence of mules, sometimes with narrative flair, sometimes with a cartoon-like twist.
Skeeter Leard • New Mexico • waow
Skeeter Leard is a regional New Mexico wildlife artist and illustrator, working primarily in acrylics and pastels. She is highly respected locally for both her art and her long-standing involvement in conservation and community arts. The Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is a major influence in her work and the subjects she paints — birds and native desert animals.
Nancy Tome • Montana • waow
Award winning, fine wildlife artist, Nancy Tome, depicts a variety of birds and other wildlife in everyday life. Combining distinct realism and composition in her paintings, Tome combines bold colors with intense detail to depict animals in their natural environment. Her acrylic paintings are designed to capture “a moment in time” of that animal’s daily life. She uses research obtained from travel, zoos and private collections to compile all of her knowledge and understanding of an animal and its environment into a realistic and emotional scene.
Judy Buckner • Texas • waow
Judy Buckner paints her deep connection to the Southwest, fueled by family time spent in New Mexico, Arizona, California and Colorado, where she draws inspiration for her oil paintings from the people and landscapes. She is also a mural painter, whose work is displayed at Dallas Fort Worth and Love Field airports in Texas, in addition to several restaurants in the area.
Gaylene Fortner • Montana • waow
Gaylene Fortner creates artworks inspired by her cherished country life in her home state of Montana. Wildlife, ranch life, antiques, and flowers grace her paintings created with oils or watercolors. She explores new methods in her paintings in order to reveal the uniqueness of each subject, utilizing a variety of sizes from small to large formats. She especially enjoys painting miniatures, some of which are so small that a magnifying glass is needed to appreciate the details.
Karen Nicolaij Glancy • California • waow
Karen Nicolaij Glancy is a California-based painter specializing in atmospheric landscapes, coastal scenes and ocean views, still life and floral paintings. She is inspired by the natural light and open environments of the American west and coastal California. She works primarily in pastels, acrylics and oils.
Deanne McKeown • Idaho • waow
I find inspiration for my sculpture in the wildlife and cultures of the high desert of Arizona and in ancient folklore and magic. I never really know entirely what will happen when I begin a piece. It is something of a negotiation with ideas, materials, and chance. It grows into what it wants to be. The inspiration for an idea may come from any number of directions. It could come through reading, poetry, a dream, or simply stimulated by the dialogue presented by a previous work. It’s important to be present, open to any stimulus.
Carol Devereaux • Texas • waow
Carol Devereaux is a landscape and figurative artist working in Dallas, Texas. Devereaux’s loose, painterly artworks reflect her interest in natural light and the visual patterns that define form. She enjoys working en plein air to create her landscape scenes; or from life when doing figurative work. Her work is also informed by her travel experiences that she explores in her studio work. Oil and pastel are her primary mediums.
Joy Gonzalez • California • waow
I have always loved the creative process, currently including painting in oils, pastels and watercolor. In my artwork, I try to convey my deep appreciation of the natural world. I hope my paintings share the excitement I feel outdoors and the exuberance of creative activity.
On my best painting days, I lose track of time and get into the flow of what I am doing, then look up and discover that I have been painting all day. My favorite subjects are landscapes, often small paintings painted plein air or larger paintings painted from my plein air studies. I love the richness and depth of oil on canvas and I also love the fluidity and delicacy of watercolor on paper. I have recently added pastels to my repertoire and I'm becoming comfortable with them.
If I can give the viewer a magical view of a special place and time of day, my art has fulfilled its purpose. Joy Gonzalez
Patricia Ridge Bradley • Oklahoma • waow
Patricia Ridge Bradley is a representational fine artist known for her work in charcoal, pastel, oil, and acrylic. She produces portraits, figures, still life, landscapes, streetscapes, and Western-themed subjects that range from loose, spontaneous expression to meticulously detailed renderings.
Destiny Bowman • Colorado • waow
Destiny Bowman creates representational oil paintings featuring still life, portraits, and narrative studies. Her emphasis is creating beauty within the play of light and shadow, blending traditional techniques with a contemporary feel.
Charlene Roake • Ohio • waow
Charlene Roake is a fine artist known for her oil paintings that reflect her deep appreciation for nature, wildlife, and landscape beauty. She especially draws inspiration from the scenery and wildlife of Ohio. She produces artworks both en plein air and in her studio.
Ginger Whellock • Colorado • waow
Ginger Whellock is a respected Colorado landscape and still life painter whose work celebrates the beauty of nature and engages viewers through thoughtful composition and evocative use of light and color. Her art is rooted in the traditional representational genre with impressionist influences. She is primarily self-taught, having mastered various mediums over the years, including pastel, pen and ink, watercolor, and graphite, before settling on oil painting.
Elin Thomas • California • waow
Elin Thomas has been painting professionally in both acrylics and oils since 1983. She owns and rides a motorcycle, which she uses to travel to many gorgeous locations for camping, painting and loving life. Her dog Bessie is a companion on these journeys. She’s been called the “fastest brush in the West” when doing on-location painting, completing a painting in about 40 minutes.
Marla Smith • Arizona • waow
Marla Smith is a contemporary oil painter known for creating artworks that reflect the landscapes and spirit of the American Southwest. Her paintings capture Southwest scenery and ranch life, drawing on the natural beauty and wide–open spaces of the region, especially near Prescott, her home.
Beki Tobiasson • Utah • waow
Beki Tobiasson is a self-taught artist working primarily in oil. She explores deep emotional and spiritual themes in her work. Her art works often tell stories based on personal or familial spiritual experiences; or depict biblical figures and spiritual concepts centered on faith and divine inspiration. Her landscapes and floral images are often symbolic narratives that reflect life challenges alongside hope and resilience.