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.

Linda Harrison–Parsons • Arizona • waow

Linda Harrison-Parsons is an award–winning artist whose work is inspired by the natural world. She creates her works from what she sees in nature and documents moments in time of those things that may be gone tomorrow.    All of her work is based on her strength in drawing while using her background in design and printmaking to create striking images.  She works in water-based oils, pencils, or in soft pastel with handmade papers to achieve her desired effects.  Her travels around the work influence her bodies of work, with each new adventure opening a new series.

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Mary Ann Cherry • Idaho • waow

Mary Ann Cherry, past president of Women Artists of the West (2019-2020), has received the Bronze Medal at the Western Regional Oil Painters of America show, and the Best of the Masters award from the Women Artists of the West. She has been included in the permanent collection of several art museums. She is a Master member/Emeritus of the Women Artists of the West and Signature member of the Pastel Society of America. Cherry’s work is in the permanent collection of several art museums, including the Phippen Western Art Museum in Arizona and the Eastern Idaho Art Museum. She has had a one woman show at the Clymer Art Museum in Washington.

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Anne Peyton • Arizona • waow

Anne Peyton combines her skill as a painter with her deep knowledge of birds and active birding experience. Her work aims to foster appreciation and understanding of bird life and conservation issues, helping viewers connect emotionally and intellectually with the natural world.  She has two criteria for each of her finished pieces: One is that the final image shows respect for the subject; the second is that viewers can learn something after studying the art.  She typically works in acrylics, layering colors meticulously to portray accurate plumage, and the natural posture and attitude of her subjects.

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Melody DeBenedictis • Colorado • waow

Melody DeBenedictis is an American contemporary fine artist, painter, singer, songwriter, and advocate, best known for her expressive oil paintings that capture the rugged landscapes of the western United States and the wild mustangs that roam them.  She often travels across western rangelands to photograph and experience the wild firsthand, using these experiences as inspiration for her paintings.  DeBenedictis is an advocate for wild horses, using her art and music to bring awareness to their habitats and the challenges they face.

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Christy Daniels • Montana • waow

Christy Daniels is a respected bronze sculptor known for her depictions of real life western and wildlife experiences. Her exceptional understanding of animal body language and emotions, not only flow through her pieces but help her tell a story forever preserved in a three– dimensional snapshot.  As well as the body language and necessary conformation, Christy feels "the look in the eye" of her animals is key to drawing the viewer into the story.

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Laara Cassells • Canada • waow

Laara Cassells is a contemporary Canadian artist noted for her paintings of figurative and pet portraits, wildlife, western themes, and equine subjects executed primarily in acrylic. Her style is grounded in realism blended with storytelling, often highlighting the emotional and individual character in both people and animals.   She lives and works on a ranch in central Alberta.  This rustic setting especially inspires her paintings of wildlife and western scenes.   

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E.L. Stewart • Washington • waow

The artist was born in a large stone mansion in Michigan, situated between Chicago and Detroit, and grew up in the Midwest surrounded by creativity from an early age. Her father painted, while her mother danced—fueled by strong coffee and a love of chocolate. Art was not a discovery later in life; it was woven into her beginnings.

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Sandra J. Schultz• Wisconsin • waow

From finding solitary sanctuary in the northern Wisconsin woods around Sandra’s childhood farm, to a career as a wildlife biologist, the natural progression after retirement has been to share the immense beauty and wonder of the natural world that she has experienced. “My hope is that others may come to understand it more deeply and be moved to protect it long after I am gone. In many ways, my art is a way of giving back—or perhaps giving forward—for all the gifts of seeing that I have been given.”

Explore a collection of wildlife paintings that reflect a lifelong connection to the natural world. Sandra creates art that honors the beauty, spirit, and individuality of wild animals. Each piece is a tribute to my deep reverence for wildlife and a commitment to artistic excellence.

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Molly Sims • Washington • waow

Molly Sims is a classical realist oil painter who specializes in depicting wildlife and birds.  She wants her paintings to feel real and lifelike and to impart a view of the beauty and innocence that she sees.  She usually prefers to have a single focus in her works, so she sometimes keeps her backgrounds loose and amorphous.   

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Jan McKay • Oklahoma • waow

Jan McKay feels her paintings of wildlife, pets, and nature, are the perfect subjects to display the beauty of creation, and the love we have been given from above.  She was an interior designer for 26 years.  This experience developed her natural eye for beauty and design. This skill translates into her paintings.

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Pastels, Birds, Still Life WAOW . Pastels, Birds, Still Life WAOW .

Deana Goldsmith • Mississippi • waow

Deana Goldsmith is an American pastel artist known for her richly detailed still life and bird pastel drawings that often evoke a sense of nostalgia and connection with nature. She is a self-taught artist.  Her carefully composed scenes feature birds, vintage objects, and flora, created with pan pastels, pastel pencils and sticks on sanded pastel paper.  She builds many delicate layers to achieve her soft, yet detailed, compositions.

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Pamela Mangelsdorf • Arizona • waow

Although I have been painting professionally since 2005, my excitement for art has spanned many more years. In particular I have enjoyed drawing and painting animals – wild and domestic, large or small since my college days. It is a joy for me to be able to depict wildlife in their natural surroundings.

Nearly all of my paintings are in oil or watercolor. Over the years, I have developed techniques that suit my style of realism. I try to portray each of the animals in as realistic a manner as possible…the details of their feathers, the colors of their coats, and the brilliance of their eyes. There is nothing so penetrating and expressive as an animal’s eyes which is why I concentrate on faithfully depicting that window into their world.

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Susan Eyer–Anderson • California • waow

Susan Eyer-Anderson is a California artist known for her oil and acrylic paintings that depict horses, wildlife, landscapes, and evocative western subjects. A realist artist, she often works from photographic references.  She uses rich color and pays careful attention to light, form, and detail.  She desires to capture both likeness and the heart and energy of her subjects.

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Laurie Riley • Washington • waow

Laurie Riley is an American nature and wildlife artist known for highly detailed, realistic depictions of animals and the natural world. She specializes in capturing the spirit and beauty of wildlife, from small creatures like mice and dragonflies to large mammals like moose, aiming to show both their physical presence and their sentient essence.   She works in a variety of traditional media, including acrylics, scratchboard, colored pencils, and watercolor pencils.

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Deborah LaFogg–Docherty • Florida • waow

Deborah LaFogg–Docherty is best known for her detailed, photorealistic paintings that celebrate wildlife, landscapes and the natural world.  She works in pastel, oil, and acrylic.  Her art practice is driven by a lifelong commitment to nature and conservation. She has participated in artist expeditions, including conservation-focused travels to Kenya to support efforts for endangered species.

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Pokey Park • Arizona & Massachusetts • waow

Pokey Park is a sculptor extraordinaire whose early and endearing love of both nature and art are the foundation for her whimsical, magical creations.  Her kinship and communion with nature and its inhabitants results in uniquely stylized bronzes of animals of every size, shape and species.   Pokey studies wildlife in natural habitats so she can get a feel for their personalities, not just their anatomy.  Their personalities are extremely important for her to be able to give her sculpture a unique attitude.  The environment they live in sets the mood for the finished sculpture.

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Carolyn Mock • Oklahoma • waow

Carolyn Mock is a realist artist, who has painted wildlife and western themes for many years.  She has always worked in oil because she enjoys its creamy feel and the slow drying time that allows her the opportunity to work and blend the colors as the painting evolves. Her choice of wildlife grew out of a firm belief that nature, as well as everything in it, has the right to exist.  She works to show the dignity of each individual animal and the awe of them she experiences as she paints.

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Oil Paintings, Avian Art, Birds WAOW . Oil Paintings, Avian Art, Birds WAOW .

Kim Middleton • Washington • waow

Kim Middleton is an oil painter who specializes in avian art using renaissance era glazing techniques.  This time–honored technique of layering transparent glazes with opaque layers achieves rich luminosity as light penetrates and reflects through the layers of oil paint.  This method creates a sense of volume and showcases the resplendent beauty of the colors and feather patterns found among birds. 

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Carol Lundeen • Minnesota • waow

Carol Lundeen is an oil painter specializing in animals, both wild and domestic.  Her style is representational.  She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art from Northwest Nazarene College, Nampa, Idaho.  She continued her studies with Robert Hagberg, Jay Moore, along with a host of other master artists. 

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Reneé Marz Mullis • New Mexico • waow

Reneé Marz Mullis is mesmerized by the pastel stick’s strength of color and brilliancy.   She paints southwestern landscapes, interiors and exteriors, florals, and still lifes, both in the studio and en plein air.  She most enjoys the multitude of challenges in conveying a strong sense of luminosity and atmosphere in her work. 

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