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.
Becky Lucht • Oklahoma • waow
Becky Lucht is a scratchboard artist. Her body of work reflects her ongoing love of animals, from horses and pets to wildlife, with a few fantasy creatures thrown in. They are generally rendered in the stark black and white of scratchboard, although she has been drawn to color versions of late.
Kathy LeJeune • Louisiana • waow
Kathy LeJeune is a self-taught artist who works in pastel, graphite and charcoal. Her drawings reflect the important role horses played in her early life — if she wasn’t riding them, she was drawing them. She spent wonderful childhood days riding at local playdays and along country roads or in pastures. Raising a family and teaching in Louisiana schools necessitated a break from drawing, but she found comfort and joy when she picked up her pencils again during the Covid pandemic. She has not put them down since. Her artistic output includes sympathetic drawings of horses and their pivotal role in western life and rodeo competitions. Cowboys and cows get some gritty starring roles, too.
Sarah Kennedy • Arizona • waow
Sarah Kennedy expresses her love of the natural world, the beauty of the desert, contemporary and traditional ranch life, rodeo, horses and figurative portraiture through her oil paintings. A sparkle in the eye, the softness of a draped mane or curved neck, the light that creates drama or luminosity, color that brings excitement or serenity are elements that infuse her work to capture life and feeling.
Elizabeth Lewis Scott • Alabama • waow
Elizabeth Lewis Scott believes that there are no shortcuts when creating art and she delights in the details. Her drawings and paintings of horses, cattle, donkeys, wildlife and western life are filled with the little details that give life and authenticity to her work.
She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Arts from Principia College, Elsah, Illinois. She then further honed her craft painting en plein air across Europe. She worked almost entirely on equine subjects early in her career, adding wildlife and western subjects in the mid-1990s.
Barbara Ellis • Vermont • waow
Barbara Ellis is a classically-trained academic realist painter. Her artwork celebrates the beauty of the natural world in all its variety — from delicate mare and foal scenes, to wildlife and rural animal scenes, to classical portraits and still lives. Ellis seeks to capture the beauty, dignity, and personalities of her subjects in her oil and acrylic paintings. Horses are an especially loved subject. She has spent years working to perfect her craft to achieve anatomical accuracy while expressing equine fire and elegance.
Dagmar Galleithner–Steiner • Washington • waow
Dagmar Galleithner-Steiner is a German born artist specializing in horse and dog portraits, and abstract expressionism. She moved to the United States in 2013 and found artistic success with her realistic portraits of dogs and horses. She was commissioned to paint the official portraits of six Del Mar Thoroughbred Club’s Pacific Classic winners.
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.
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.
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.
Jeanne Cardana • Oregon • waow
Jeanne Cardana’s biological, wildlife, and medical illustration artworks have been featured in textbooks, and scientific and domestic publications, including National Wildlife, Mother Earth News, and Fins and Feathers. Her career has spanned fifty years—and counting! Her mediums of choice are colored pencil and graphite pencil on Claire Fontaine Pastelmatte paper, Bristol Vellum paper, and archival illustration boards. She has produced award winning original works and continues to take private commissions.
Donna Smyth • California • waow
Donna Smyth is an oil painter. She is inspired by nature's beauty and most especially the horse. She developed her craft studying under the tutelage of Jeff Watts at his atelier for six years.
Carol Heiman-Greene • California • waow
Carol Heiman-Greene is inspired by all aspects of nature and all of her paintings are based on personal reference. Life and Light are central to Carol’s work. Her joy comes from capturing even the smallest of moments to those that are the most dramatic that nature has to offer.
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.
Janel Maher • Tennessee • waow
Janel Maher's sculptures are known for capturing the heart, soul and very essence of one of our greatest treasures — the horse. Maher's sculptures can be found among collections throughout the United States, Europe and South America with two perpetual trophies in England and South Africa.
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.
Natalie Campbell • California • waow
Natalie Campbell captures the beauty of the world around her, primarily working with pastels on black paper. She infuses each piece with the same passion and energy that drives her. Despite being new to the art world, she is already a nationally award-winning artist and has shown her work locally, nationally and internationally. Natalie looks forward to continuing to exhibit her artwork around the country
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.
Tricia Bass • Colorado • waow
Art has been a lifetime passion for Tricia Bass. Her love of the great outdoors and particularly the Rocky Mountains, has led her to a career as a plein air painter.
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.
Roberta Barnes • Nebraska • waow
Roberta Barnes, a native of Nebraska, lives with her husband on a ranch next to the Nebraska National Forest. The artist shares her love of the landscape through her works in oils. She finds an endless source of inspiration in the landscapes, not only in her “roots” from the Columbus area but also in the Sandhills region of Nebraska. Her work is a part of both public and private collections.