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.

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

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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.

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Lana Dunlap • Oklahoma • waow

Lana Dunlap is a self-taught fine artist known for creating artworks inspired by the working West — including portraits and images of ranch life, livestock, and western themes. Her pieces often capture both the quiet strength and raw emotion in her subjects.  She works in gouache, colored pencils, and charcoal on various substrates.

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Andrea Stanley • California • waow

Andrea Stanley’s paintings are a reflection of her fascination with light and color, which stems from years of affection for and study of impressionist and post-impressionist artists of Europe, as well as turn-of-the-century artists of California. She admires artists as diverse as Ingres, Van Gogh, and Sorolla.  Her works include landscapes, still life, figurative, and western subjects in oil, charcoal, and pencil.

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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. 

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Shuli Wang • Illinois • waow

Shuli Wang is an accomplished artist residing in the vibrant Chicago metropolitan area. She was born in Inner Mongolia, China.  She exhibited exceptional talent and an unwavering passion for the world of drawing and painting from an early age.  Wang possesses a remarkable versatility, working fluently with an array of artistic mediums including pencil, charcoal, pastel, watercolor, acrylic, and oil. Her artistic style can be aptly described as impressionistic realism, where vibrant brushwork often reminiscent of traditional Chinese freehand paintings infuses life into her creations.  The subjects of her work are as diverse as her mediums, spanning landscapes, still life, and portraiture.

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Dagmar Galleithner–Steiner • Washington • waow

Dagmar Galleithner-Steiner is a German born artist specializing in horse and dog portraits, and abstract expressionism.  She moved to the United States in 2013 and found artistic success with her realistic portraits of dogs and horses.  She was commissioned to paint the official portraits of six Del Mar Thoroughbred Club’s Pacific Classic winners. 

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