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.
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.
B. J. (Bonnie) Brentz • Arizona • waow
Bonnie attended college with the idea of becoming a classical painter in the manner of the old masters. The art school environment at that time didn't quite meet her desires. After some time off to paint on her own, she returned to college to combine her art interest with her science interest. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in biomedical communications. Bonnie went on to work in medical illustration and graphics for many years.
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.
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
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.
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.
Yun Wei • California • waow
Yun Wei is a representational painter who uses traditional oil painting techniques in all of her work. She is deeply inspired by Dutch Golden Age still life masters such as Willem Kalf and Willem Claeszoon Heda—artists known for their rich textures, finely rendered objects, and quiet emotional resonance. She has received awards for excellence and best-in-show in various juried exhibitions. Her work has also been featured in respected art publications such as Western Art Collector, Art of the West, Southwest Art, and Fine Art Connoisseur.
Deana Goldsmith • Mississippi • waow
Deana Goldsmith is an American pastel artist known for her richly detailed still life and bird pastel drawings that often evoke a sense of nostalgia and connection with nature. She is a self-taught artist. Her carefully composed scenes feature birds, vintage objects, and flora, created with pan pastels, pastel pencils and sticks on sanded pastel paper. She builds many delicate layers to achieve her soft, yet detailed, compositions.
Brenda Whicker • Indiana • waow
Brenda Whicker is an impressionist painter of still life, horses and landscapes known for her painterly brushwork and her use of rich, dramatic color. Farm life, changing seasons, and the effects of natural light are recurring themes and inspiration in her oil and acrylic paintings. She is influenced by traditional still life painting from the Dutch Masters of the 1600s to French Academics of the 1900s.
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.
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.
Katherine Galbraith • New York • waow
Katherine Galbraith is a nationally recognized American artist known for her oil paintings focusing on figurative realism. Her subjects include portraits, landscapes, still life, florals, and animal subjects. Her portraiture clients have included notable figures such as President George H. W. Bush, and leaders in various professional fields. She has established a strong reputation across the United States through exhibitions, awards, and representation in galleries nationwide.
Carlota Estevez • Minnesota • waow
Carlota Estevez is an artist from Argentina living in Minnesota since 1995. She is experienced in using multiple media, and is not afraid of mixing materials and techniques from different traditions. She loves painting from life, be it en plein air or still life. Her favorite theme is how light moves and changes within the visual space. Her paintings elude becoming a perfect copy of reality. She, instead, focuses on what is vital to make each painting "breathe in its own air".
Brandi Donan • Tennessee • waow
Brandi Donan is a contemporary impressionist artist known for her expressive oil paintings and fine art work. Her style focuses on capturing the essence of life with dynamic brushwork and expressive energy, aiming to evoke strong emotional responses from viewers. She creates both figurative and representational work, often in oil but also producing drawings and pastels.
Paula B. Holtzclaw • North Carolina • waow
American Contemporary artist, Paula Holtzclaw, has gained a national reputation for her ability to capture the drama of nature on canvas. She is widely known for her luminous landscapes that feature her masterful use of color, light, mood, atmosphere, and composition. These works reflect a deep connection to unspoiled nature. Her still life paintings blend an impressionistic flair with classical realism influenced by her love of the Old Masters’ works. Holtzclaw’s dedication to her craft and continuous pursuit of artistic growth have made her a respected figure among her peers.
Laurie LaMere • Wyoming • waow
Laurie Lamere has lived in Wyoming since the age of sixteen. She loves Wyoming, where inspiration is endless, and the wildlife and landscapes are food for her soul. She first resided in the small western town of Pinedale, where she finished high school, and stayed for the next 40 years. She moved to Jackson Hole with her family in 2013. There she joined the Teton Plein Air Painters on their weekly painting excursions. She soon learned that painting “en plein air” would be her preference whenever possible.
Lamere is mostly self-taught. Painting from life helped to improve her skills immensely, not to mention the sheer joy of being able to paint the beautiful Teton Range and its surrounding landscapes on a regular basis. She now lives in Ten Sleep, Wyoming and tries to spend as much time as possible painting outdoors.
Liz Bonham • Texas • waow
Her early career began when she was 15 and working as a pastel portrait artist at Six Flags. After college, she worked as an illustrator in the children's and gift book market. Her paintings have graced many books, including her Gold Medallion winner, "The Crippled Lamb", by Max Lucado, and her Silver Medallion winner and Angel Award or Excellence in Media winner, "Timeless Moments", by Alton Howard. Her book "The Crippled Lamb" has sold almost two million copies. The collector edition of this book includes songs and the story recorded by the voice of Jodi Benson, the voice of "The Little Mermaid". Her books are sold around the world in different languages and her publishers include Harper Collins, Scholastic, Word, Howard and Chariot Victor. She has also been National Show Artist for the Appaloosa Journal Magazine and was featured in the magazine.
Dee Kirkham • Nevada • waow
Dee Kirkham is an accomplished artist, living in the foothills of the Lake Tahoe National Forest in Nevada and has been flourishing as a distinguished fine arts oil painter for over 40 years. Her exceptional talent in still life, figurative and plein air has put her in the forefront of the American Art Scene, won her many awards, and given her the opportunity to share her passion with students. Her motto is “Art is my God given passion and journey – more fulfilling and beautiful shared than alone”.
Reneé Marz Mullis • New Mexico • waow
Reneé Marz Mullis is mesmerized by the pastel stick’s strength of color and brilliancy. She paints southwestern landscapes, interiors and exteriors, florals, and still lifes, both in the studio and en plein air. She most enjoys the multitude of challenges in conveying a strong sense of luminosity and atmosphere in her work.
Anna Lisa Leal • Texas • waow
Texas pastel artist, Anna Lisa Leal, honors the fierce beauty of the botanical wonders of Texas, and the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts; as well as the wildlife and found objects found in these regions. The textures and tenacity of life in these harsh areas inspire raw, radiant stories painted from her heart to represent the spirit of the American Southwest.