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.

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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Bets Cole. Oregon . waow

Bets Cole sells and shows her artwork nationwide. Working primarily in the plein air tradition, she paints outside in the landscape with immediacy and openness. She welcomes the challenge of exploring and painting unfamiliar places. Her choice of medium – whether acrylic, watercolor, gouache or charcoal – is dictated by the subject matter, colors, and quality of light specific to each location.

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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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Canine, Dogs, Horses, Landscape WAOW . Canine, Dogs, Horses, Landscape WAOW .

Nancy Smyth . Florida . waow

My art journey began as a child and has been a constant throughout my life. Although I received my BFA in College, I did not start my full-time career as an artist until later in life as my earlier career was in the corporate world. I am now focusing on my new path as a portrait artist that specializes in equine and canine art.

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Jody Martin . Texas. waow

Born in Lubbock, Texas, Jody is the daughter of the late Conny Martin, artist, and C.B. Martin, builder, photographer, and watercolorist. Always passionate about art, Jody never doubted that she would become an artist. She earned her degree in art from Abilene Christian University, and went on to study painting under Hall of Fame artists, Daniel Greene and Emily Guthrie Smith. She values most the education she received from her mother, Conny Martin. Under Conny's tutelage she learned classical drawing and contemporary design. 

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Diane Gomez. California. waow

Diane Burchette-Gomez is a graduate of Parsons’ School of Design for Illustration and Eugene Lang College for Social Psychology. After college she worked for her family’s Gourmet Food and Gift company, Aunt Sally’s Praline Shops, in New Orleans, Louisiana; meanwhile, creating art for herself.

38 years of life experiences led Diane to oil painting. “The feel of my brush gliding across a taut canvas, like it was ice skating, is intoxicating.” She became obsessed and quit her retail job to paint full time. 

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Cathryne Trachok . California . waow

Having grown up in Nevada, and California, Cathryne sees the world with a Western viewpoint. She uses that western foundation to look for inspiration in old and new experiences. She looks at art as communication across cultures, time and experiences!

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