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.

Karen Storm • Colorado • waow

Karen Storm is a contemporary oil painter whose work focuses on capturing the essence of nature and landscape in an impressionist style, emphasizing color, light, and atmosphere in a way that reflects her personal connection to the outdoors.  She often paints en plein air to immerse herself in the shifting shapes, colors, and light of the landscape. 

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Ellie Freudenstein • California • waow

Ellie Freudenstein is best known for her richly colored plein-air and studio landscapes and coastal scenes in oil and watercolor of California’s central coast as well as European scenes.  Her work reflects the American Impressionist tradition with a focus on light, color, and mood in her landscapes. Her lifelong dedication to painting from nature has made her a recognized figure in contemporary plein-air circles, especially in the southwestern United States.

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Kelli Folsom • Connecticut • waow

Kelli Folsom is an award-winning contemporary artist best known for her oil paintings of still life scenes and landscapes, created directly from life with a classical, painterly sensibility.  Her style blends traditional techniques influenced by the Old Masters and American impressionists, emphasizing rich color, dramatic light and expressive brushwork. 

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Sally Delap–John • New Mexico • waow

Sally Delap-John is best known for her plein air landscapes and village scenes, especially those inspired by the light, architecture, and natural beauty of Northern New Mexico. Her work often captures the rugged landscapes, old adobe villages, and sweeping skies of the region in vibrant oil paintings.   She works alla prima — that is, completing a painting in a single session, whether in the field or from life in a studio setting.

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Laurel Lake McGuire • Illinois • waow

Laurel Lake McGuire is an American artist best known for her expressive watercolor paintings created in the realist tradition with a strong focus on landscapes, still life, floral subjects, and plein air work. Her art draws inspiration from her travels and the diverse environments she has experienced across North America.  McGuire’s plein air process involved carrying her gear in an R.V. and pulling it to sites with a wagon so she could paint quickly on location — a method that deeply informs her later studio work.   She uses classic watercolor techniques that evolve into a layered, solid style that conveys both detail and atmosphere.

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Simone B. Silva • New Mexico • waow

Simone B. Silva is a contemporary landscape artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  She is known for her plein air and studio oil paintings that capture the subtle interplay between history, cultural heritage, and the light, atmosphere and beauty of the American Southwest.  She works in oil, primarily on panels.  Her style tends to realism with painterly interpretation. 

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Kathryn A. McMahon • Florida • waow

 Kathryn A. McMahon is an American artist known for her impressionistic oil paintings, especially landscapes and marine scenes. Her work reflects traditional impressionist techniques — distinctive use of light, color, and short brushstrokes to capture the feel of nature.  She has traveled all over the world, always taking her sketching or painting materials with her to inform and inspire her new output. 

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Nori Thorne • Arizona • waow

Nori Thorne is an award–winning pastelist celebrated for her depictions of the people, artifacts, lifestyle and the land of the American Southwest.  She works to capture a strong sense of place and secrets revealed through the mastery of her medium — capturing changing light and color with formidable drawing skill.  She is undaunted by the challenges of working en plein air to render her desert scenes.  Cayoneering, which always calls for endurance while packing in her pastels and panels, is just part of the joy of making art about this rugged region.   She is equally at home with revealing the unique beauty of the lifestyle and peoples of the American Southwest with sensitive feel and authenticity.

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Katy Smith • California • waow

Katy Smith is a plein air landscape artist specializing in paintings of locations on the Central Coast of California. She finds her inspiration directly from the world around her. She enjoys painting locations of historical significance both to capture their beauty and to draw awareness to those places that need to be conserved for future generations.  Her subject matter and loose brushwork lean toward California Impressionism/The Eucalyptus School with a subtle sense of romanticism, and the color palette of the Hudson River School. Her work has been described as “ethereal”.

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Nina Cobb Walker • Texas • waow

Nina Cobb Walker is a progressive, modern Classical Impressionist.  She was trained in the tradition of Classical Russian Impressionism. She applies the traditional philosophy and techniques of Impressionism to her own work, but changes the way traditional Impressionism is perceived by re-imagining it and its subject matter in a modern context and sensibility. 

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Jude Tolar • Oklahoma • waow

Jude Tolar's art is lyrical and representational.  She celebrates beauty and joy in the world.  She's known mainly for floral and tree portraits outdoors and glass subjects indoors. She prefers to work from life, using mostly Terry Ludwig soft pastels on Art Spectrum ColourFix paper.  She began using pastels as a way to study color and work easily en plein air, and immediately loved the results.  Tolar has exhibited in galleries, invitational group and solo shows; her work is in collections across the United States and abroad. She also demonstrates her pastel techniques and teaches pastel workshops on various subjects.

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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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Susan Hediger Matteson • Colorado • waow

Susan Hediger Matteson is a contemporary oil painter who focuses on landscapes, outdoor scenes and animals.  Her work is celebrated for its quiet light, atmospheric quality, and representational beauty.  She paints en plein air and uses her studies and sketches made on location as inspiration for her studio work.

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Cheryl Koen • Texas • waow

Whether it is the poetry of a mustang in gallop or the sublime beauty of the southwestern landscape, Cheryl Koen’s paintings reflect the spirit of the west and its inhabitants. The wide–open spaces conveyed in her work are meant to invoke a feeling of nostalgic connection with the wild west and dreams of times past and present.

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Joy Gonzalez • California • waow

Joy Gonzalez is a contemporary southern California artist.  She works in oils, watercolor and pastel.  Her work predominately centers on landscapes and seascapes — especially scenes from Coastal California, the Sierra Nevada, and Southwestern United States.  She prefers to paint en plein air to capture shifting light and atmosphere.  She will then expand those studies into larger studio works. Her style balances expressive brushwork with a strong sense of realism.

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Ilene Gienger–Stanfield • Oregon • waow

Ilene Gienger-Stanfield is an American contemporary artist known for her figurative paintings in oil and soft pastels, distinguished by bold, impressionist color relationships and simplified forms.  She describes her approach as “journalistic,” aiming at both figurative storytelling and getting straight to the essence of her subject without overly elaborate rendering.  Collectors and galleries praise her ability to blend clarity of form with emotional resonance. 

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Andria Sullivan • California • waow

Andria Sullivan is an American visual artist known for her representational paintings that focus on wildlife, botanical subjects, landscapes, and dream-like scenes. She creates her art mainly with oil paints and pastels.  She explores scale, color, and composition freely, sometimes placing her subjects in imaginative or unexpected contexts.

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Grace Schlesier • California • waow

Grace Schlesier is a well-established American artist whose impressionistic oil paintings celebrate the beauty, mood and light of the natural world.  Her work focuses on western landscapes, coastal scenes, wilderness areas, rivers, and the sea, with an emphasis on the feeling and atmosphere of a place.  Her paintings are noted for a soft, luminous quality that evoke peace and tranquility.  Schlesier’s work draws on her direct experience with nature and a long career painting both en plein-air and in studio. 

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Laurie Sorkin • Colorado • waow

Laurie Sorkin is a contemporary oil and pastel painter of the diversity of life.   Her subjects include people in every day activities, flowers, landscapes, old vehicles, and architecture, all marked by sensitive and visually pleasing compositions.

Sorkin actively exhibits her work, primarily in the Colorado region.  She is a juried associate member of Women Artists of the West, and a member of Art Students League of Denver and Plein Air Artists Colorado.

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