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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jackie Penner • Washington • waow
Western life in its variety holds a special fascination for Jackie Penner. Her paintings reflect the strength of her feelings for the horses, wildlife, people and landscape of the true west.
Barbara Meikle • New Mexico • waow
Barbara Meikle is an artist who paints the simple world outside of her door in Tesuque, New Mexico. Meikle has been an artist from childhood, sketching the horses she loved and took care of in order to ride. After earning a BA in painting and printmaking at the University of Denver and studying watercolor at Cambridge University in England, she returned to New Mexico in 1990 to pursue her dream of owning a gallery. Barbara Meikle’s bright and vibrant work includes horses elegantly in motion or the expression of whimsical donkey or the dynamic beauty of the Western landscape. Barbara’s artistic success has allowed her to give back to the animal community she loves by donating to equine rescues and animal shelters throughout the Southwest, including Equine Spirit Sanctuary in Taos and the New Mexico Wildlife Center in Española.
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.
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.
Leslie White • Colorado • waow
Leslie White is an American artist best known for her watercolor paintings that capture the essence of landscapes, places of personal meaning, and travel experiences. Her work often reflects bright, intense colors and dramatic shadows, drawing viewers into the emotion and atmosphere of each scene. She creates the vivid color of her vibrant paintings by layering multiple washes of watercolor.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.