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.
Rhonda Williams • Oklahoma• waow
Rhonda was born and raised in Bartlesville,Oklahoma and has a BS in Art Education from Oklahoma State University and hours toward a minor in printmaking. She is married to Paul and has four grown children. Rhonda has lived in Verdigris, Owasso, Oologah and Bartlesville in Oklahoma. She has worked as an Advanced Placement High School Art Teacher as well as teaching art at both the elementary and middle school levels. Throughout the years Rhonda has worked as both a commercial artist as well as a fine artist. Since retiring from teaching in 2020, she has been concentrating on her work as a fine artist, painting commissioned artwork in oil paint. Rhonda is a current member of the Bartlesville Art Association.
Audrey Caylor • Texas • waow
Audrey Caylor is an award–winning contemporary wildlife and western artist. Her medium of choice is oil with a heavy bold brush and palette knife technique through which she explores the beauty of wildlife and how the simplicity of one brush stroke can depict that. The purpose of her work is to capture the feeling or the spirit of the animal with a simple glance.
Becky Hicks • Texas • waow
Becky Hicks’ love affair with painting cattle started with the summers and holidays spent on her great grandmother’s ranch. She spent hours with scissors and stacks of The Cattleman magazines cutting pictures of cows, barns and fences. Little did she know then that her painting, Gold in the Morning Son, would be featured on the cover someday. In addition to cattle, Hicks also paints and draws the western and ranch lifestyles, Native Americans, animals and wildlife in oils, watercolors and charcoal.
Lauri Ketchum • Oklahoma • waow
Lauri Ketchum's agricultural roots and life-long love affair with the American cowboy have fueled her concentration in Western Art. Ketchum loves capturing the essence of hard–working ranchers and sharing the ranching lifestyle through her art. She began her art career working in watercolor and acrylics before settling on oil as her preferred medium. Ketchum is largely self-taught and has refined her skills through workshops with artists she admires.
Kathy LeJeune • Louisiana • waow
Kathy LeJeune is a self-taught artist who works in pastel, graphite and charcoal. Her drawings reflect the important role horses played in her early life — if she wasn’t riding them, she was drawing them. She spent wonderful childhood days riding at local playdays and along country roads or in pastures. Raising a family and teaching in Louisiana schools necessitated a break from drawing, but she found comfort and joy when she picked up her pencils again during the Covid pandemic. She has not put them down since. Her artistic output includes sympathetic drawings of horses and their pivotal role in western life and rodeo competitions. Cowboys and cows get some gritty starring roles, too.
Jennifer Wendt • Kansas • waow
Jennifer Wendt paints what she knows best—the animals and nature she enjoys every day operating her own small ranch. Cattle, horses, dogs, barn cats and wildlife are favorite subjects for this self–taught artist. She works from her home studio. She can otherwise be found outdoors riding one of her horses, tending cattle, checking fences, choring, or doing any of the other myriad tasks around the ranch. Wendt’s observant mind drinks in the surrounding inspiration and translates that into paintings that are exhibited in many of the top shows and exhibitions in the United States. She has garnered many awards, including several "Best of Shows", "Artist's Choices", and "People's Choices" along the way.
Barby Schacher • Washington • waow
Barby Schacher is a Western Fine Artist whose work is deeply rooted in the traditions of ranch life, horses, and the rugged spirit of the American West. She was raised in a world where horseback riding, rodeos, and cattle drives shaped her experiences. She channels these influences into her original, detailed, pastel paintings of Western life that are both authentic and heartfelt. These artworks tell the timeless stories of everyday ranch life, celebrating both its beauty and grit.
Donna Smyth • California • waow
Donna Smyth is an oil painter. She is inspired by nature's beauty and most especially the horse. She developed her craft studying under the tutelage of Jeff Watts at his atelier for six years.
Roberta Barnes • Nebraska • waow
Roberta Barnes, a native of Nebraska, lives with her husband on a ranch next to the Nebraska National Forest. The artist shares her love of the landscape through her works in oils. She finds an endless source of inspiration in the landscapes, not only in her “roots” from the Columbus area but also in the Sandhills region of Nebraska. Her work is a part of both public and private collections.
Terri Wagner • Oklahoma • waow
Terri Wagner is an award-winning artist living on a small farm in Kiefer, Oklahoma. At four years old she was drawing horses, seeing the world through an artist's eye. Her love of horses, animals and the outdoors inspires her to paint, responding to the amazing world around her. "I like to paint realism, but strive to keep it loose with bold brushstrokes and vibrant colors."
Suzie Varner • Texas • waow
The western artist, Susie Varner says as a child with ADD it was difficult to be still, but put a pencil in her hand and she could sit for hours! Some might even say Susie was born with a pencil in her hand, for as long as she can remember she longed for a horse, drawing them was the next best thing. Born in Chickasha, Oklahoma; #7 out of ten children in a two bedroom house, it was often chaotic and a spot in a corner with scrap paper and a pencil gave her solace. Susie says there was so much love in that little house, it taught her to seek God given talents and she feels blessed to have found her gift. Much of her inspiration comes from living in the country and owning horses. As a child, she copied art from western artists, Charles Russell and Frederic Remington and feels that is where her love for western art comes from.
Stephanie Burk • Texas & Colorado • waow
Scenes of the American west, Places Stephanie Burk loves, with animals she adores and people she loves. Between two points of home in Texas and her cabin in Colorado, she paints until her heart is full all the landscapes and culture of the area. I