Stories of the Old West called to Shirley at an early age. It took her years to finally respond to her calling as an artist, to depict the people who had intrigued her as a child.

I don’t know which I loved more as a child, my art supplies, or my stick horses. I blame television’s Roy Rogers and Trigger for the horse obsession.

Donna Merchant-Crooks has a kinship with nature, where she finds solace and inspiration. She spent years cooking and pulling mule strings in Idaho’s wilderness, developing an appreciation for the rare and untouched.

Margaret strives for accuracy as well as aesthetics when creating realistic figures of animals and humans. Originally from Northwestern Colorado ranching country, Margaret first learned she had a propensity for sculpting after she retired from working 30 years in research in the pharmaceutical industry.

Brenda Morgan works from her studio in Dardanelle, Arkansas.

She has always gravitated toward the western genre and artists such as James Bama and Carl Brenders inspired her to paint realism. Having a love of equine subjects, adding cowboys, cowgirls and Indigenous Americans seemed a natural progression.

Vicki Pedersen has a life-long passion for art.  She feels so fortunate that she is living the dream -- painting what she loves.  She focuses mostly on painting the American West -- cowboys and cowgirls, Native Americans, and the beautiful landscapes of deserts, mountains, and everything in between. 

Mejo’s studio walls are covered in paintings of cowboys and their horses, prize cattle, and agave cactus. She has worked as a graphic designer, illustrator, costume manager for traveling Broadway shows, and a courtroom sketch artist. Her inner voice said, ‘Paint. Run away and paint,’and since settling in New Mexico, she has found endless inspiration in cowboys, ranches and the landscape but then again, she has always loved horses and animals.