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.

Melody DeBenedictis • Colorado • waow

Melody DeBenedictis is an American contemporary fine artist, painter, singer, songwriter, and advocate, best known for her expressive oil paintings that capture the rugged landscapes of the western United States and the wild mustangs that roam them.  She often travels across western rangelands to photograph and experience the wild firsthand, using these experiences as inspiration for her paintings.  DeBenedictis is an advocate for wild horses, using her art and music to bring awareness to their habitats and the challenges they face.

Read More

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.

Read More

E.L. Stewart • Washington • waow

The artist was born in a large stone mansion in Michigan, situated between Chicago and Detroit, and grew up in the Midwest surrounded by creativity from an early age. Her father painted, while her mother danced—fueled by strong coffee and a love of chocolate. Art was not a discovery later in life; it was woven into her beginnings.

Read More

Sandra J. Schultz• Wisconsin • waow

From finding solitary sanctuary in the northern Wisconsin woods around Sandra’s childhood farm, to a career as a wildlife biologist, the natural progression after retirement has been to share the immense beauty and wonder of the natural world that she has experienced. “My hope is that others may come to understand it more deeply and be moved to protect it long after I am gone. In many ways, my art is a way of giving back—or perhaps giving forward—for all the gifts of seeing that I have been given.”

Explore a collection of wildlife paintings that reflect a lifelong connection to the natural world. Sandra creates art that honors the beauty, spirit, and individuality of wild animals. Each piece is a tribute to my deep reverence for wildlife and a commitment to artistic excellence.

Read More

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.   

Read More

Jan McKay • Oklahoma • waow

Jan McKay feels her paintings of wildlife, pets, and nature, are the perfect subjects to display the beauty of creation, and the love we have been given from above.  She was an interior designer for 26 years.  This experience developed her natural eye for beauty and design. This skill translates into her paintings.

Read More

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.

Read More

Pamela Mangelsdorf • Arizona • waow

Although I have been painting professionally since 2005, my excitement for art has spanned many more years. In particular I have enjoyed drawing and painting animals – wild and domestic, large or small since my college days. It is a joy for me to be able to depict wildlife in their natural surroundings.

Nearly all of my paintings are in oil or watercolor. Over the years, I have developed techniques that suit my style of realism. I try to portray each of the animals in as realistic a manner as possible…the details of their feathers, the colors of their coats, and the brilliance of their eyes. There is nothing so penetrating and expressive as an animal’s eyes which is why I concentrate on faithfully depicting that window into their world.

Read More

Beverly Endsley • Colorado • waow

Beverly Endsley’s art journey began with the isolation brought on by childhood illness and her bonding with a gentle friend — a pet rabbit.  She developed a deep empathy for animals in that crucible that informs her paintings.   She is a classically trained artist known for her expressive oil paintings, watercolors, and sketches that capture the unique spirit of pets and wildlife.  Her impressionist style lends a sense of immediacy and mystique, encouraging viewer participation in discovering each animal's story.  She specializes in commissioned pet portraits that honor the human–animal bond.

Read More

Cheryl King • Washington • waow

Cheryl King has an ongoing love affair with art and wildlife that has spanned more than thirty years.   She is best known for her expressive representations of animals and nature.  Her constant goal is to honor the animal she is painting, while infusing fun-loving, bold, honest and energetic qualities to her depictions.  King paints primarily in oils on aluminum or with mixed media.

Read More

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.

Read More

Susan Eyer–Anderson • California • waow

Susan Eyer-Anderson is a California artist known for her oil and acrylic paintings that depict horses, wildlife, landscapes, and evocative western subjects. A realist artist, she often works from photographic references.  She uses rich color and pays careful attention to light, form, and detail.  She desires to capture both likeness and the heart and energy of her subjects.

Read More

Marla Epstein • California • waow

Marla Epstein is an oil painter and sculptor.  Her art primarily features animals, both wild and domestic.  Her style blends realism with expressive presence.  She does not always seek to depict every detail, but strives to convey each creature’s character and vitality, rendered with strong presence and expressive technique, exploring their strength, beauty, and freedom.   Her process commonly involves observing, photographing, and researching the animal subjects before creating her artworks.  Many of her paintings emphasize a close, personal scale with the animals filling the canvas.

Read More

Laurie Riley • Washington • waow

Laurie Riley is an American nature and wildlife artist known for highly detailed, realistic depictions of animals and the natural world. She specializes in capturing the spirit and beauty of wildlife, from small creatures like mice and dragonflies to large mammals like moose, aiming to show both their physical presence and their sentient essence.   She works in a variety of traditional media, including acrylics, scratchboard, colored pencils, and watercolor pencils.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

Teanna Kurtz • Washington • waow

Teanna Kurtz creates pastel paintings of landscapes, light, water, skies and wildlife, primarily on suede substrate.  She loves pastel for the available rich pigments and the expressive quality she is able to achieve with them.  Her goals for her artworks are purity of form and technique while capturing atmospheric moments of peace, serenity and calm in nature.

Read More

Deborah LaFogg–Docherty • Florida • waow

Deborah LaFogg–Docherty is best known for her detailed, photorealistic paintings that celebrate wildlife, landscapes and the natural world.  She works in pastel, oil, and acrylic.  Her art practice is driven by a lifelong commitment to nature and conservation. She has participated in artist expeditions, including conservation-focused travels to Kenya to support efforts for endangered species.

Read More

Cathy Sue Munson • Texas • waow

Cathy Sue Munson paints intricately detailed watercolor and gouache paintings, specializing in wildlife, longhorn cattle, western subjects and commissioned dog portraiture. 

She graduated from the University of Texas with a Bachelor of Fine Art degree, with honors, in Studio Art. She was featured in an article on outstanding canine artists in the April 2008 issue of Southwest Art Magazine.   The artist is widely recognized for her commissioned artwork for the University of Texas Athletics and Texas Exes alumni of their longhorn mascots, Bevo IX through current Bevo XV.  The paintings are on display in the Silver Spurs Museum at the football stadium.

Read More