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.

Jennifer Wendt • Kansas • waow

Jennifer Wendt paints what she knows best—the animals and nature she enjoys every day operating her own small ranch.  Cattle, horses, dogs, barn cats and wildlife are favorite subjects for this self–taught artist.  She works from her home studio.  She can otherwise be found outdoors riding one of her horses, tending cattle, checking fences, choring, or doing any of the other myriad tasks around the ranch.  Wendt’s observant mind drinks in the surrounding inspiration and translates that into paintings that are exhibited in many of the top shows and exhibitions in the United States.  She has garnered many awards, including several "Best of Shows", "Artist's Choices", and "People's Choices" along the way.

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Christy Stallop • Texas • waow

Christy Stallop is a Texas-based artist working primarily in oil paint. Her work is rooted in storytelling, memory, and a strong sense of place. Through bold compositions and symbolic imagery, she explores themes of identity, nostalgia, and cultural heritage. Stallop often focuses on animals, everyday objects, and still life arrangements that feel both personal and universal—quiet moments that carry emotional weight, humor, or social commentary.

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Judy Fairley • Washington • waow

Judy Fairley is pastel and scratchboard artist, living and working in Washington.  She grew up in Clarkston, where she and her twin sister helped on the family's horse and cattle ranch. Her experiences while growing up provided her with endless inspiration that she has shared in her numerous artworks shown and exhibited throughout the United States and Canada.

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Nancy Harkins • Oklahoma • waow

Nancy Harkins is a watercolorist and graphite artist from Oklahoma.  Her style is realist and her subjects are wide ranging.  Her award–winning works have been featured in the watercolor anthology, Splash 19:  The Illusion of Light, and featured in two books, Seasons of Life and Seasons of Love. Her paintings are avidly sought for private and corporate collections.

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Oil Paintings, Animals, Wildlife, Western WAOW . Oil Paintings, Animals, Wildlife, Western WAOW .

Leslie Kirchner • California • waow

Leslie Kirchner is an award–winning artist who lives and works in the rural mountains of California.  The landscape, animals, and atmosphere of the west have always been inspiring to her. She feels it important to connect with and portray each animal's uniqueness and individual personality, and convey that to the viewer through her paintings.  She strives to capture a sense of the life and movement of her subjects through the exploration of color, composition, and sensitive brushwork.

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Barbara Gerard–Mitchell • Montana • waow

Barbara Gerard-Mitchell is an artist who works primarily in oils, acrylics, and watercolors.  Her subjects include landscape, wildlife, equine, and the western life-style. She is a graduate from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she received an Associate of Fine Arts Degree.  She has continued her studies with many renowned master painters. 

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Dana Lombardo • Oklahoma • waow

Dana Lombardo resides by the shores of Grand Lake in Northeast Oklahoma. There she draws endless inspiration from the picturesque surrounding landscape and the vibrant local culture. Her artistic works manifest a deep-rooted affection for the land.  She also depicts Native American themes in which she endeavors to preserve and share the depth of their heritage.

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Rose Collins • Arizona • waow

Rose Collins was enthralled with art, painting, and the western culture from her early childhood.  She relocated to Tucson, Arizona when she retired from her practice as a psychologist in New York.  She picked up a paintbrush and took a leap of faith into the unknown. That began a soul-searching decade of self-discovery, mentorship and successes in the very competitive art world, and paved the way to gallery representation. She loves being an established local Tucson Wildlife and Contemporary Southwest Artist.. 

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Shelly J. Cox • Florida • waow

Shelly J. Cox is a contemporary realist oil painter who lives and works in the horse community of Jupiter Farms, Florida, USA.  She is a graduate of the Art Institute, Fort Lauderdale, Florida with a degree in commercial illustration, but she is a self-taught oil painter.  Cox diligently works regularly with master artist mentors to advance her painting skills. 

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Amanda Cowan • Wyoming • waow

 Western and wildlife artist, Amanda Cowan, spends her time outdoors drawing the horses, cows and any wildlife that she comes into contact with.  She is self taught, painting in watercolors and oils.  Her art is in private collections in Korea, Australia, Canada, France and the United States.  

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Betty J. Billups • Idaho • waow

"Betty Jean Billups is a superb Impressionist painter, blessed with the talent to produce rich and colorful paintings of her everyday experiences.  She paints powerful works of visual delight and honest truth. 

Using a bold brush and solid colors, she paints from her heart and her soul."

—     (Mr.)Jean Stern, Director Emeritus, The Irvine Museum

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Beth Zink • Arizona • waow

Beth has a BA in Art from Bethany College, and studied drawing and painting at the graduate level. She has enjoyed teaching painting to adults for over 20 years.

Her paintings hang in numerous private and corporate collections, hospitals, restaurants and country clubs around the country.

She has been featured in Phoenix Home & Garden Magazine, Southwest Art, American Art Collector, Images Magazine, So Scottsdale and many other publications.

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Judith Brunko • Colorado & Arizona • waow

Judith Brunko loves the dramatic movement of the human figure and how it relates to the landscape of Colorado and Arizona, which she calls home. The people of the West and Southwest are what fuels her art.  She portrays the figure in dance or costume evoking an emotion of time and place. Utilizing color, form and delicate brush strokes she creates a story.

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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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Iwona Jankowski • Texas • waow

My “Mottled Art” – Equine art developed since 2002 in my new “Mottled” style that merges abstract and expressionism with a touch of realism.
The subject is created on a colorful abstract background to express feelings, often shown as a close-up,
with special attention to the eyes and focusing on specific moods and composition. Often with secondary transparent image/s to show movement or specific scenario.
In my paintings, I don’t intend to replicate photo-realistic objects, but to capture the utmost uniqueness of life.
Illustrating my subjects, I often pay no attention to exact shapes, textures, or real colors and emphasize just on a small fragment,
sometimes a very tiny detail, in order to insinuate an idea. That approach leads me to concentrate on what I feel and not what I see or know about the subject. Also, it helps me to effectively use visuals to depict a story about my subject.

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Mary Russell • Oklahoma • waow

Mary Russell lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma where she paints representational art that encompasses multiple genres including figure work, landscape, and still life. She is the recipient of awards from the prestigious Salon International, Women Artists of the West, the Pastel Society of America, and Oil Painters of America, and she has been featured in multiple magazines including American Artist, Southwest Art, and American Art Collector.

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Kathy Harder • California • waow

For the last fifteen years California artist, Kathy Harder has been fulfilling her dream as a land steward on her mountain ranch in the old oak forests of California. With the stabilization of her homestead she has found "a return to source" in her artwork, a reconnection with her materials and a "spirit journey" with the animals she documents. Her subject matter has come from her strong link to both the wonder and power of nature.

Her current medium is the monotype, know as the most painterly method among printmaking techniques. Kathy gently pulls depth and dimension into her subject by utilizing her own versatile method. The result is stunningly captured by the vibrant colors in her works detail. This "light field" of mixed media could be described as an attempt to demonstrate the "other worldly quality" that is sometimes present when "spirit" enters material form.

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Marcia Ballowe • Montana • waow

Born in Washington state but raised in Montana, Marcia can't remember a time when she wasn't sketching even as a child. Some of her fondest memories were trips to rural Montana or to her grandmother's cabin on the lake. "I often found myself drawn to the  majesty of the early morning and late evening light always surrounding the snowcapped mountains," Ballowe reflects.

 Marcia Ballowe’s creativity flourished with the encouragement of her husband, and family, as she attended multiple workshops with notable national artists: Irving Shapiro, Scott Christensen, John MacDonald, Marc Hanson, Matt Smith, to mention a few. But she felt the biggest impact on her work came through plein air painting where she learned to capture the fleeting light and mood of a place in her art.  Photographs never held the values and hues she could see outdoors. 

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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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Naomi Shachar • California • waow

Arriving in Mission Viejo California, Naomi developed her artistic skills by studying color theory and practicing drawing and painting techniques. Naomi’s art subjects focus on: Western themes, Equine, Still Life, and the Natural Scapes of land and sea. All of which contribute to the transfer of her artistic visions to the canvas and onwards to the keen eye of the art viewer.

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