WAOW Artistry of the West

The WAOW Artistry is slowly being built to provide a page on our site to promote each artist. This project began late summer 2024. We have over 300 members to load here on their pages. You can search by name, location or by subject matter to find an artist.

Denise Horne-Kaplan . North Carolina & Florida . waow

Denise Horne-Kaplan started her professional career in 1983.  She has participated in exhibits and juried shows — over 74 national and International juried shows and eight solo shows to date.  She is in six international publications, including being a featured centerfold Artist with thirteen paintings in the 1999 Winter Issue of Watercolor magazine.  Horne-Kaplan is a signature member, one of only 130 in the country, of the Miniature Artists of America. 

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Nanette Biers . California . waow

Nanette Biers is a Northern California painter with a rich and varied background of professional achievement. She received her Bachelor's degree in Fine Art with honors from UC Berkeley. Starting in 1980, for the next three decades she pursued a career as a freelance commercial illustrator, working through her NYC agents, Morgan Gaynin, Inc., and garnering awards and appearances in several prestigious illustration annuals. She became known for her painterly realism, working exclusively in oils. Today her paintings can be found in private and corporate collections around the country.

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Roberta Barnes . Nebraska . waow

Roberta Barnes, a native of Nebraska, lives with her husband on a ranch next to the Nebraska National Forest. The artist shares her love of the landscape through her works in oils.  She finds an endless source of inspiration in the landscapes, not only in her “roots” from the Columbus area but also in the Sandhills region of Nebraska.  Her work is a part of both public and private collections.

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Jill Banks . Virginia . waow

Oil painter, JILL BANKS, teaches multiple classes a week over three semesters each year; exhibits at  top fine art festivals; sends work off to juried exhibitions; paints in juried and invitational plein air competitions; takes on a small number of portrait commissions; and travels for personal painting trips and inspiration. Stylistically, she continues to evolve from realism with feeling to impressionism with even more emotion and simplification.

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Barbara Archer-Baldwin . Arizona . waow

Barbara Archer-Baldwin, PSA, MC-IAPS, APAA, PSWC

A Master Medallion holder in the International Association of Pastel Societies, Barbara Archer-Baldwin and her husband John Baldwin relocated to Tucson in February, 2024 after living in Florida for over 25 years. She is an academically schooled professional artist with training at Rhode Island School of Design, Philadelphia University of the Arts, and Temple University's Tyler School of Fine Arts. She has been represented by the Four Corners Gallery in the Tucson Desert Art Museum since May 2024. Her work has been juried into three shows at the Phippen Museum, Prescott, AZ, since her relocation to Arizona. Painting the southwest has really expanded her muse.

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Flowers, Animals, Cactus, Landscape, Canyons, Light WAOW . Flowers, Animals, Cactus, Landscape, Canyons, Light WAOW .

Risa Waldt . Arizona . waow

Risa Waldt, a native Tucsonan, I grew up in the desert. While horseback riding along the Rillito river, I soaked up a vision of the desert that pursued me until I began painting to express it. In 1973 I began a love affair with light, using watercolor. I love to paint the Grand Canyon, wildlife, and historical features of Arizona.

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Flowers, Birds, Animals, Realism, Cactus WAOW . Flowers, Birds, Animals, Realism, Cactus WAOW .

Carol Amos . Missouri/Arizona . waow

Carol Amos was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and grew up in the Midwest. Her grandfather was an artist and gold leaf frame maker and her grandmothers were both artists who introduced her to painting in oils.  She has enjoyed a lifelong passion for creating art and incorporating art into daily life while raising her family and pursuing careers in chemistry and commercial real estate.  She currently lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and Scottsdale, Arizona, and enjoys being a full time artist and grandmother. Her oil paintings depict the landscape, plants and animals of the Southwest and the Midwest, and are exhibited and collected throughout the United States.

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Debbie Hughbanks . Washington . waow

Debbie Hughbanks is a professional artist specializing in wildlife, equine & domestic animal paintings, as well as figurative and western themed pieces. Painting most often in pastel or acrylic she still finds time to explore other avenues including scratchboard and mixed media work. Hughbanks is an artist that is passionate about the creation of art and finds her inspiration all around her studio located in northeastern Washington State.  Fascinated by animals, nature and interesting people she meets along the way there is never a shortage of subject matter to spark her creative flame. The connection she feels for the subjects she paints, as well as the passion and joy she experiences in the actual creation of the work, is evident in each unique completed piece of art.

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Ran Wu . California . waow

Ran was born in Taiwan. At a young age Ran showed an interest in the arts, so her parents sent her to study drawing, watercolor, and Chinese brush painting. As Ran grew into a young adult, she moved to the United States and eventually settled in Northern California. After putting her art on hold to build a career for herself and her family in the corporate world, Ran found the opportunity to return to her previous passion of painting and pursued becoming a fine artist.

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Leah Wiedemer . Florida . waow

Every artist will tell you that they have loved to draw from the time they could hold a crayon. I’m no different. Every artist will tell you that they have loved to draw from the time they could hold a crayon. I’m no different. 

I remember when my cousin, a couple of years my junior, won an art award in his elementary school. It was then that I decided a real artist was some sort of phenom. Not something I was born to. It didn’t stop me from drawing, but it did make me think a career in art was not something in my future. …

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Debbie Pounders . Florida . waow

Debbie Pounders, a self taught artist from Tennessee, transforms her visions into immersive works of art that captivate viewers and collectors with their realism and innovation. Each piece begins with her unique process of mentally capturing the subject through her photography and painting in her mind before she even approaches the canvas.

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Elizabeth Ming Cooper. New Mexico.waow

Daily, Beth finds a dozen potential paintings in her visual world, which is a great blessing.  The art of seeing and helping others to see and grasp the beauty of life’s small fleeting moments is the desire for her art work.

Whether it is sunlight glowing through a flower petal, golden backlight on a child at play or the soft glow of evening light coming through the trees on a mesa or mountain top, these captured moments and slices of life are the whispers of a higher power and what makes up life itself.  Through painting she hopes to evoke a memory or a feeling to the viewer and share the emotion of a slice of time.

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Landscape, Animals, Birds, Wildlife, Western WAOW . Landscape, Animals, Birds, Wildlife, Western WAOW .

Karen Cade. South Dakota . waow

Karen has been a professional artist for over 35 years having studied under master instructors in college.  Karen’s love and ability to convey the emotion of her western and wildlife paintings has earned her artistic awards and regional acclaim

As a distinguished wildlife and western painter whose artistic repertoire includes oils, pastels, inks, and mixed media. Through her art, she strives to capture the essence of nature, creating a reflection of her personal vision—a vision that is deeply inspired by the serene yet raw landscapes and the majestic creatures that inhabit them. Her works explore the symbiotic relationship between the natural world and the rugged spirit of the American West, inviting viewers to share in her appreciation of nature's beauty.

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Valeria Yost. Idaho . waow

Valeria Yost is passionate about her artwork. She has created works of art since she could hold a pencil. She believes she was given a gift from her creator, and she loves sharing it. Her love of horses, then and now, are still favorites. She also loves to paint the wildlife that surrounds her Idaho home. In the last few years, she has punched up the color and added Native American themes and abstract design combining them into new exciting paintings. Her love of nature shines through in all of her paintings.

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Tara Kemp . Oregon . waow

“I strive to preserve the beauty in nature through my work. It is something of an act of preservation and in a way an act of rebellion to bring to the viewers attention the beauty of our endangered natural world.”

A “values” painter, Tara loves attuning to shadow and highlight, noticing the way a color changes as it moves into shadow or light, and reflects colors from it’s surroundings. 

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Judy Sprague . Colorado . waow

Judy is a fine artist working in the mediums of oil, pastel, and ink,  and live in the beautiful state of Colorado. She has been drawing or painting since she was a child in Tennessee, finally earning an art degree in her late thirties, but didn't pursue painting professionally until the last 25 years when she retired from a career in Education. Tosday she is pleased to have earned the recognition of  Associate Member Women Artists of the West, Master Signature Member  of the Pastel Society of Colorado and a Signature Member of the Arizona Pastel Artists Association.  Her art is exhibited in galleries, juried art exhibitions throughout the United States, and on her web site.

 

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