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.

Sascha Ripps • Colorado • waow

Sascha Ripps is a contemporary realist painter of landscapes, wildlife, botanical and floral themes.  She works in oil on panel with the goal of capturing the intensity of light, color, texture and the energy she feels from her subjects.  She blends elements of realism with abstraction, especially when zooming in on textures in her work.

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Jeanne Hyland • New Mexico • waow

Jeanne Hyland earned her BFA degree from University of New Hampshire in figurative sculpture and drawing followed by studies at École des Beaux Arts, France. After years in commercial design, she returned to her Fine Art sculpture roots in Colorado, participating in Loveland Sculpture Invitationals and Sedona Sculpture Walks. Hyland adopted watercolor as her medium after moving to California where she taught at Brand Library Studios, the LA Academy of Figurative Art, and the Learning & Product Expo at Pasadena.  Hyland now teaches locally in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, Artisan’s Art Spot and other locales nationally and internationally.

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Karen Storm • Colorado • waow

Karen Storm is a contemporary oil painter known for landscape and nature paintings created en plein air and in her studio.  Her style is a combination of representational and impressionist influences with which she focuses on her emotional connection to nature through her expression of light, color and atmosphere.    

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Margi Tucker • Arkansas • waow

Margi Tucker is a contemporary pastel artist known for her nature-inspired artworks.  Her work often blends detailed realism with symbolic or spiritual narrative in her quest to capture the essence or spirit of her subject and its surroundings.  Her drive is to preserve the species or scene in her art, as such may not exist in years to come. 

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Toni James • Arizona • waow

Toni James is an award-winning Arizona artist who was born and raised in the valley of the sun. She is the middle child of seven siblings.  James used her artistic talent as her escape from all of the chaos that large families have, all the while developing her drawing skills on her own.  She began to pursue her art seriously in 1995, showing her graphite and colored pencil work in local shows.  She later expanded her mediums and works to include acrylic and oil paintings as well.

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Betsy Johnson Welty • Colorado • waow

Betsy Johnson Welty is a contemporary American oil painter best known for her vibrant, expressive landscapes, cityscapes, and floral compositions featuring bold colors and loose brushwork that blend realism, impressionist elements and graphic design sensibilities.  She regards the act of creating art as a process of continued discovery that brings with it challenges, surprises, obstacles, insight and epiphanies. Each new painting presents a new set of adventures and a quest for interpreting the world she sees in a unique way.

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Pam Holnback • Colorado • waow

Pam Holnback creates contemporary impressionist oil paintings.  She finds inspiration in nature, her travels, and in her home and garden.  Each painting is done with loose, spontaneous brushwork that expresses the light and color that she sees.  The principles of art and elements of design are basic in the initial drawing and development of each painting.  She produces artworks both en plein air and in her studio.

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Sasha Phillips • Pennsylvania • waow

Sasha Phillips integrates three fields of professional endeavor.  She is a high–level corporate lawyer, a professional artist, and developer of mental health through art wellness programs.  Phillips is an oil painter.  Her art focuses on visual storytelling, often tied to mental or emotional processing of trauma and social issues.

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Gaylene Fortner • Montana • waow

Gaylene Fortner creates artworks inspired by her cherished country life in her home state of Montana.  Wildlife, ranch life, antiques, and flowers grace her paintings created with oils or watercolors.  She explores new methods in her paintings in order to reveal the uniqueness of each subject, utilizing a variety of sizes from small to large formats. She especially enjoys painting miniatures, some of which are so small that a magnifying glass is needed to appreciate the details.

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Karen Nicolaij Glancy • California • waow

Karen Nicolaij Glancy is a California-based painter specializing in atmospheric landscapes, coastal scenes and ocean views, still life and floral paintings.  She is inspired by the natural light and open environments of the American west and coastal California.  She works primarily in pastels, acrylics and oils.

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Carol Devereaux • Texas • waow

Carol Devereaux is a landscape and figurative artist working in Dallas, Texas.  Devereaux’s loose, painterly artworks reflect her interest in natural light and the visual patterns that define form. She enjoys working en plein air to create her landscape scenes; or from life when doing figurative work.  Her work is also informed by her travel experiences that she explores in her studio work.  Oil and pastel are her primary mediums.

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Joy Gonzalez • California • waow

I have always loved the creative process, currently including painting in oils, pastels and watercolor.  In my artwork, I try to convey my deep appreciation of the natural world. I hope my paintings share the excitement I feel outdoors and the exuberance of creative activity.

On my best painting days, I lose track of time and get into the flow of what I am doing, then look up and discover that I have been painting all day.  My favorite subjects are landscapes, often small paintings painted plein air or larger paintings painted from my plein air studies. I love the richness and depth of oil on canvas and I also love the fluidity and delicacy of watercolor on paper. I have recently added pastels to my repertoire and I'm becoming comfortable with them.

If I can give the viewer a magical view of a special place and time of day, my art has fulfilled its purpose. Joy Gonzalez

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Patricia Ridge Bradley • Oklahoma • waow

Patricia Ridge Bradley is a representational fine artist known for her work in charcoal, pastel, oil, and acrylic.  She produces portraits, figures, still life, landscapes, streetscapes, and Western-themed subjects that range from loose, spontaneous expression to meticulously detailed renderings.

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Ginger Whellock • Colorado • waow

Ginger Whellock is a respected Colorado landscape and still life painter whose work celebrates the beauty of nature and engages viewers through thoughtful composition and evocative use of light and color.  Her art is rooted in the traditional representational genre with impressionist influences.  She is primarily self-taught, having mastered various mediums over the years, including pastel, pen and ink, watercolor, and graphite, before settling on oil painting. 

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Beki Tobiasson • Utah • waow

Beki Tobiasson is a self-taught artist working primarily in oil.  She explores deep emotional and spiritual themes in her work.  Her art works often tell stories based on personal or familial spiritual experiences; or depict biblical figures and spiritual concepts centered on faith and divine inspiration.  Her landscapes and floral images are often symbolic narratives that reflect life challenges alongside hope and resilience.

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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.

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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.

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Barbara Summers Edwards • Utah • waow

Barbara Summers Edwards, born and raised in Southeastern Idaho, is a fourth generation native of the American West. Graduating from Utah State University in illustration and working as a freelance illustrator, Barbara evolved as a fine art oil and watercolor painter. Commonly portraying figurative imageries, her painterly, realistic paintings have received numerous awards as they have been exhibited in international, national, regional and state juried, invitational, group and two person exhibits.

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Barbara Fox • New York • waow

Barbara Fox is a painter recognized for watercolor and oil mediums; still life, figure, and floral subjects. Fox's meticulously crafted paintings are exhibited and collected internationally, have received numerous awards, and have been selected for publication in fine art books and magazines

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