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.

Cindy Sorley–Keichinger • Canada • waow

Cindy Sorley–Keichinger is a Canadian painter whose artwork focuses on realism depicting wildlife, nature, and landscape subjects.  She prefers working in acrylics, but also works in oil and gouache.  She is known for using vivid colors and capturing the essence of her subjects with a mix of observational detail and artistic vision.   Sorley-Keichinger wants to bring viewers closer to nature and wildlife through her paintings. She believes that awareness leads to care.

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June Dudley • Texas • waow

 June Dudley’s paintings celebrate heritage, family, and the American West, rendered with personal warmth and vibrant color.  Working in acrylics, Dudley describes her work as “impressionistic realism,” in which she combines expressive color with detailed, realistic scenes.  She has deep, emotional connection to her subjects as many of them are based on family members or close friends, or her own animals.  Thus, her work has an immediate intimate feeling.  You are welcomed into her world, rural life in Texas, as an observant friend.  

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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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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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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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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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Cynthia Feustel • Colorado • waow

Cynthia Feustel is an oil painter primarily known for her portrait and figurative work. Whether capturing an introspective moment of a figure or the quiet stillness in an arrangement of treasured objects, the subjects in her paintings are sensitively rendered inviting viewers into the narratives she portrays.   Having been a traditional portrait artist for 25 years, her attention to detail is evident.  Adhering to the time-honored method of building up multiple layers of paint over an initial underpainting, her work merges the classical tradition of oil painting with images that reveal a fresh, contemporary expression.

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Barbara Summers Edwards • Utah • waow

Barbara Summers Edwards, born and raised in Southeastern Idaho, is a fourth generation native of the American West. Graduating from Utah State University in illustration and working as a freelance illustrator, Barbara evolved as a fine art oil and watercolor painter. Commonly portraying figurative imageries, her painterly, realistic paintings have received numerous awards as they have been exhibited in international, national, regional and state juried, invitational, group and two person exhibits.

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Barbara Fox • New York • waow

Barbara Fox is a painter recognized for watercolor and oil mediums; still life, figure, and floral subjects. Fox's meticulously crafted paintings are exhibited and collected internationally, have received numerous awards, and have been selected for publication in fine art books and magazines

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Pat OBrien • Arizona • waow

Pat O’Brien is an Arizona artist known for her oil paintings of landscapes, western themes, desert imagery, old vehicles and animals.  She often experiments with palette knife techniques, undercoat painting, color exploration, and expressive brushwork, and sometimes nearly complete abstraction of her subject. 

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Kadra Nevitt • Kansas • waow

Kadra Nevitt is a Kansas-based artist known for her evocative works centered on Western themes, outdoor life, natural landscapes and animals —most notably horses.  She blends heartfelt subject matter with technically strong pastel and watercolor work to evoke the beauty and spirit of the American West.  She is self-taught and has developed a reputation for life–like portrayals that lean toward soft realism with expressive technique. 

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L J McLoughlin • Arizona • waow

LJ McLoughlin is an artist and a working cowgirl.  She creates oil and acrylic paintings.  Her inspiration comes from the gritty scenery and western lifestyle she is surrounded by — historical ranches, working ranches, and the Native American land where the Apache and Navajos once lived, along with the special ambient light of Arizona, the color of the rocks, dirt, sky and the mountains.  McLoughlin’s work reflects her authentic experience with ranch life—she grew up raising and training horses and continues to live and work on a ranch in southeastern Arizona with her husband.

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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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Pat Meyer • Oklahoma • waow

Pat Meyer’s love of art started as a collector.  Since retiring from the corporate world, the pursuit of personally creating art has been her passion.   Meyer creates oil paintings and floral compositions that celebrate the beauty of flowers, light, color, and nature. Many pieces depict roses, garden scenes, bouquets, and other lush floral imagery.  The artist often reflects on personal memories of flowers and the sensory experience of gardens, using vibrant colors and expressive brushwork to bring her floral scenes to life.

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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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