WAOW Artistry of the West

The WAOW Artistry is slowly being built to provide a page on our site to promote each artist. This project began late summer 2024. We have over 300 members to load here on their pages. You can search by name, location or by subject matter to find an artist.

Anne Spoon • Oklahoma • waow

Anne Spoon is a realist oil painter.  She has spent the past two decades painting people, places and objects that have a quiet beauty; that are, perhaps, seemingly simple, and often overlooked until painted.  Her skillfully painted works have a dreamlike, soft quality that invites the viewer to linger and look more closely.   She attended The School of Visual Arts at Bronx, New York. 

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Barbara Ellis • Vermont • waow

Barbara Ellis is a classically-trained academic realist painter.  Her artwork celebrates the beauty of the natural world in all its variety — from delicate mare and foal scenes, to wildlife and rural animal scenes, to classical portraits and still lives.  Ellis seeks to capture the beauty, dignity, and personalities of her subjects in her oil and acrylic paintings.  Horses are an especially loved subject.  She has spent years working to perfect her craft to achieve anatomical accuracy while expressing equine fire and elegance.   

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Sherrie Nielsen • California • waow

    Sherrie Nielsen is a figurative artist creating oil paintings and drawings of fauna, flora, cosmos and humanity, working in California.  Her favorite mediums are oil, charcoal and colored pencil.  Her art works have been juried into international and regional shows, received recognition and awards; and have been published as illustration in a major university academic journal and book cover design.

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Leah Wiedemer • Florida • waow

Every artist will tell you that they have loved to draw from the time they could hold a crayon. I’m no different. Every artist will tell you that they have loved to draw from the time they could hold a crayon. I’m no different. 

I remember when my cousin, a couple of years my junior, won an art award in his elementary school. It was then that I decided a real artist was some sort of phenom. Not something I was born to. It didn’t stop me from drawing, but it did make me think a career in art was not something in my future. …

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Debbie Pounders • Florida • waow

Debbie Pounders, a self taught artist from Tennessee, transforms her visions into immersive works of art that captivate viewers and collectors with their realism and innovation. Each piece begins with her unique process of mentally capturing the subject through her photography and painting in her mind before she even approaches the canvas.

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Western, Wildlife, Landscape, Dogs, Birds WAOW . Western, Wildlife, Landscape, Dogs, Birds WAOW .

Casey Cheuvront • Arizona • waow

My favorite shoes are hiking boots.

For years I've explored the wildernesses of the Southwest, hiking, backpacking, hang gliding and mountain biking - interacting with our wild places up close and in person. This has profoundly influenced my work.  I believe we are incomplete without a connection to, and appreciation of, the natural world, and that we should cherish and protect it. 

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Western, Realism, Wildlife, Pets, Dogs, Cats WAOW . Western, Realism, Wildlife, Pets, Dogs, Cats WAOW .

Julie Frothingham • Kansas • waow

It was on the prairies of Minnesota that I learned to observe and listen. The song “Country Sunshine” says it nicely. I am forever a child of God; a student of life.

I believe everyone is an artist.  Art is life. We can't help but share life all around us daily. We each have a gift and a personal choice as to how we express it, feel it, use it, and thus, live it. 

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Margaret Drake • Texas • waow

Margaret strives for accuracy as well as aesthetics when creating realistic figures of animals and humans. Originally from Northwestern Colorado ranching country, Margaret first learned she had a propensity for sculpting after she retired from working 30 years in research in the pharmaceutical industry.

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Amy Evans • Colorado • waow

“It is the seeking of the soul that inspires me to create. The connection with the incredible beauty and calm of nature is what my collectors say they love in my paintings. While painting I move from observing the light as it defines an object into a place that eludes time and space. This is when I feel a connection to our Creation because the scene I am capturing is filled with such beauty it makes my soul sing. When a collector expresses what I emotionally felt while creating the painting I know I have succeeded. “- Amy Evans

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