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.

Kadra Nevitt • Kansas • waow

Kadra Nevitt is a Kansas-based artist known for her evocative works centered on Western themes, outdoor life, natural landscapes and animals —most notably horses.  She blends heartfelt subject matter with technically strong pastel and watercolor work to evoke the beauty and spirit of the American West.  She is self-taught and has developed a reputation for life–like portrayals that lean toward soft realism with expressive technique. 

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L J McLoughlin • Arizona • waow

LJ McLoughlin is an artist and a working cowgirl.  She creates oil and acrylic paintings.  Her inspiration comes from the gritty scenery and western lifestyle she is surrounded by — historical ranches, working ranches, and the Native American land where the Apache and Navajos once lived, along with the special ambient light of Arizona, the color of the rocks, dirt, sky and the mountains.  McLoughlin’s work reflects her authentic experience with ranch life—she grew up raising and training horses and continues to live and work on a ranch in southeastern Arizona with her husband.

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Kathryn A. McMahon • Florida • waow

 Kathryn A. McMahon is an American artist known for her impressionistic oil paintings, especially landscapes and marine scenes. Her work reflects traditional impressionist techniques — distinctive use of light, color, and short brushstrokes to capture the feel of nature.  She has traveled all over the world, always taking her sketching or painting materials with her to inform and inspire her new output. 

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E.L. Stewart • Washington • waow

The artist was born in a large stone mansion in Michigan, situated between Chicago and Detroit, and grew up in the Midwest surrounded by creativity from an early age. Her father painted, while her mother danced—fueled by strong coffee and a love of chocolate. Art was not a discovery later in life; it was woven into her beginnings.

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Sandra J. Schultz• Wisconsin • waow

From finding solitary sanctuary in the northern Wisconsin woods around Sandra’s childhood farm, to a career as a wildlife biologist, the natural progression after retirement has been to share the immense beauty and wonder of the natural world that she has experienced. “My hope is that others may come to understand it more deeply and be moved to protect it long after I am gone. In many ways, my art is a way of giving back—or perhaps giving forward—for all the gifts of seeing that I have been given.”

Explore a collection of wildlife paintings that reflect a lifelong connection to the natural world. Sandra creates art that honors the beauty, spirit, and individuality of wild animals. Each piece is a tribute to my deep reverence for wildlife and a commitment to artistic excellence.

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Nori Thorne • Arizona • waow

Nori Thorne is an award–winning pastelist celebrated for her depictions of the people, artifacts, lifestyle and the land of the American Southwest.  She works to capture a strong sense of place and secrets revealed through the mastery of her medium — capturing changing light and color with formidable drawing skill.  She is undaunted by the challenges of working en plein air to render her desert scenes.  Cayoneering, which always calls for endurance while packing in her pastels and panels, is just part of the joy of making art about this rugged region.   She is equally at home with revealing the unique beauty of the lifestyle and peoples of the American Southwest with sensitive feel and authenticity.

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Molly Sims • Washington • waow

Molly Sims is a classical realist oil painter who specializes in depicting wildlife and birds.  She wants her paintings to feel real and lifelike and to impart a view of the beauty and innocence that she sees.  She usually prefers to have a single focus in her works, so she sometimes keeps her backgrounds loose and amorphous.   

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Jan McKay • Oklahoma • waow

Jan McKay feels her paintings of wildlife, pets, and nature, are the perfect subjects to display the beauty of creation, and the love we have been given from above.  She was an interior designer for 26 years.  This experience developed her natural eye for beauty and design. This skill translates into her paintings.

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Leslie White • Colorado • waow

Leslie White is an American artist best known for her watercolor paintings that capture the essence of landscapes, places of personal meaning, and travel experiences. Her work often reflects bright, intense colors and dramatic shadows, drawing viewers into the emotion and atmosphere of each scene. She creates the vivid color of her vibrant paintings by layering multiple washes of watercolor.

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Susan Hediger Matteson • Colorado • waow

Susan Hediger Matteson is a contemporary oil painter who focuses on landscapes, outdoor scenes and animals.  Her work is celebrated for its quiet light, atmospheric quality, and representational beauty.  She paints en plein air and uses her studies and sketches made on location as inspiration for her studio work.

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Cheryl Koen • Texas • waow

Whether it is the poetry of a mustang in gallop or the sublime beauty of the southwestern landscape, Cheryl Koen’s paintings reflect the spirit of the west and its inhabitants. The wide–open spaces conveyed in her work are meant to invoke a feeling of nostalgic connection with the wild west and dreams of times past and present.

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Pamela Mangelsdorf • Arizona • waow

Although I have been painting professionally since 2005, my excitement for art has spanned many more years. In particular I have enjoyed drawing and painting animals – wild and domestic, large or small since my college days. It is a joy for me to be able to depict wildlife in their natural surroundings.

Nearly all of my paintings are in oil or watercolor. Over the years, I have developed techniques that suit my style of realism. I try to portray each of the animals in as realistic a manner as possible…the details of their feathers, the colors of their coats, and the brilliance of their eyes. There is nothing so penetrating and expressive as an animal’s eyes which is why I concentrate on faithfully depicting that window into their world.

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Beverly Endsley • Colorado • waow

Beverly Endsley’s art journey began with the isolation brought on by childhood illness and her bonding with a gentle friend — a pet rabbit.  She developed a deep empathy for animals in that crucible that informs her paintings.   She is a classically trained artist known for her expressive oil paintings, watercolors, and sketches that capture the unique spirit of pets and wildlife.  Her impressionist style lends a sense of immediacy and mystique, encouraging viewer participation in discovering each animal's story.  She specializes in commissioned pet portraits that honor the human–animal bond.

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Cheryl King • Washington • waow

Cheryl King has an ongoing love affair with art and wildlife that has spanned more than thirty years.   She is best known for her expressive representations of animals and nature.  Her constant goal is to honor the animal she is painting, while infusing fun-loving, bold, honest and energetic qualities to her depictions.  King paints primarily in oils on aluminum or with mixed media.

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Katherine Galbraith • New York • waow

Katherine Galbraith is a nationally recognized American artist known for her oil paintings focusing on figurative realism.  Her subjects include portraits, landscapes, still life, florals, and animal subjects.  Her portraiture clients have included notable figures such as President George H. W. Bush, and leaders in various professional fields.  She has established a strong reputation across the United States through exhibitions, awards, and representation in galleries nationwide.

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Lauri Ketchum • Oklahoma • waow

Lauri Ketchum's agricultural roots and life-long love affair with the American cowboy have fueled her concentration in Western Art.  Ketchum loves capturing the essence of hard–working ranchers and sharing the ranching lifestyle through her art.  She began her art career working in watercolor and acrylics before settling on oil as her preferred medium.  Ketchum is largely self-taught and has refined her skills through workshops with artists she admires. 

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Danielle Kirby • Wyoming • waow

Danielle Kirby is a Western landscape and fine art painter known for her richly colored, dramatic depictions of the skies, land, wildlife and light of the American West, especially the wide–open plains of southeastern Wyoming.  Her oil paintings are noted for saturated, high–contrast color palettes and dramatic use of light, coupled with expressive brushwork and artistic interpretation.

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Andria Sullivan • California • waow

Andria Sullivan is an American visual artist known for her representational paintings that focus on wildlife, botanical subjects, landscapes, and dream-like scenes. She creates her art mainly with oil paints and pastels.  She explores scale, color, and composition freely, sometimes placing her subjects in imaginative or unexpected contexts.

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Kay Juricek • Colorado • waow

Kay Juricek primarily paints landscapes of the American West, with a particular fascination for areas in Colorado like the San Luis Valley and North Park. Her oil paintings highlight the open, expansive beauty of these regions — vast vistas, light-filled skies, and scenes that inspire a sense of peace and spiritual connection to the land. She strives to capture both the transcendent beauty and the emotional essence of these places.  Her artistic voice reflects her personal experience, treating scenic views with a blend of realism and emotional depth inspired by the memory of her experience with the site.

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