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.
Sandra Haynes • Oregon • waow
It's hard to tell where Sandra Haynes is the happiest — in the studio or out in the wild — but in both places she feels very much at home. The child who loved to draw, immersed in the world of wildlife and the woods, grew into a mountain woman; one who shares, through her art and through her wisdom, the beauty of the world she knows. Haynes tells her stories of animals and the western lifestyle through her scratchboard etchings tinted with watercolors, oil paintings and drawings.
Barby Schacher • Washington • waow
Barby Schacher is a Western Fine Artist whose work is deeply rooted in the traditions of ranch life, horses, and the rugged spirit of the American West. She was raised in a world where horseback riding, rodeos, and cattle drives shaped her experiences. She channels these influences into her original, detailed, pastel paintings of Western life that are both authentic and heartfelt. These artworks tell the timeless stories of everyday ranch life, celebrating both its beauty and grit.
Sharon Standridge • Texas • waow
Sharon Brown Standridge is a noted painter depicting the life of the American west and nostalgic figurative scenes with great light and energy. Her western heritage runs deep. Her grandfather, father, his four brothers and a sister were known as the world’s youngest rodeo performers, Tex Brown and His Little Buckaroos. This rich western heritage informs Standridge’s ability to render the people and places of the west with vivid authenticity.
Susan Temple Neumann • Texas • waow
Susan Temple Neumann is an oil painter who enjoys a more painterly style of realism, which helps keep the artwork fresh and "alive." Her art is born from a desire to capture the emotion or mood of a particular scene. A life-long fascination with native Americans, cowboys, horses, wildlife and the western landscape has fueled Neumann's art over the years and been the inspiration for her western pieces.
Mary Lou Pape • Kansas • waow
Mary Lou Pape’s passion for nature has made wildlife and the western way of life the primary focus of her artistic practice. Her primary mediums are oil, pastel and pencil. Travels to national parks, nature preserves, rodeos and ranches in America continually provide her with inspiration for her paintings of life in our remarkable country.
Sherry Cobb-Kelleher • Colorado • waow
Each day is a gift that Cobb-Kelleher treasures. She strives to capture those special but otherwise missed moments of ranch life — moments that poignantly highlight the struggle for that tenuous and beautiful balance between the world as it is and the world as we wish it to be.
Janis Blayer • Arizona • waow
Janis Casco-Blayer’s studio and plein air paintings from the Northwest, Arizona, Hawaii and abroad reflect diversity in her paintings. She has worked in a variety of mediums including oil, watercolor, zinc plate etching and bronze sculpture among others. Blayer’s impressionistic style captures the spirit of animals, people and landscapes with uncanny precision and emotion. Her recent move to Buckeye, Arizona has ushered in a new era of creativity, infusing her artwork with captivating southwest landscapes, cowboys, horses, and rodeo scenes.
Debbie Carroll • Texas • waow
The work of Debbie Carroll is about expressing what she observes when surveying the West and Southwest regions of the United States. The challenge is to draw out the intrinsic beauty of the ordinary and often overlooked. She strives to elevate her subjects in her painting — not to show the obvious, but to reveal the extraordinariness of what is familiar. Travel is the backbone of Carroll’s work. She feels it throws her into new circumstances and surroundings, bringing new inspiration to take home to share through her studio work.
Andi Burnum • Colorado • waow
Andi Burnum finds herself continually drawing inspiration from her love for the American West. She grew up on the high plains of Kansas where she spent a majority of her time outside, in and around nature and her family's cows. Burnam’s love for animals, both domestic and wild, knows no bounds. Her pieces are usually a mixture of moments that she has loved, combined with her need to create semi-realistic and detailed art.
Yvonne Bonacci • California • waow
Yvonne was born and raised on a cattle ranch. Horses and art have always been her passion. It's no surprise horses and people are her favorite subject. Many of her works are done on commission. She has taught workshops in the community for over 25 years. She works in a variety of mediums, and has won many awards over the years. Yvonne was inducted into the Elk Grove Community Hall of Fame for her accomplishments as an artist in 2020. Her paintings have hung at the California State Capital and at Washington D.C.
Shirley Quaid • Oklahoma • waow
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.
Linda Mutti • California • waow
Linda Mutti has pursued her art from a young age, loving it as she created it. Retiring from her family Vet Clinic, her goal is to bring joy through her art.
Wei Zhang • Texas • waow
Wei Zhang is a fine art oil painter with a focus on portraiture and figurative work. Her passion for art emerged early in life and built a classical foundation.
Ali Armstrong • Nevada • waow
“Painting fur you want to reach out and touch is my absolute favorite thing to paint and my ultimate goal.” Ali is a wildlife artist living in Nevada.
Brenda Morgan • Arkansas • waow
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 • California • waow
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 Okon • New Mexico • waow
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.