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.
Jackie Penner • Washington • waow
Western life in its variety holds a special fascination for Jackie Penner. Her paintings reflect the strength of her feelings for the horses, wildlife, people and landscape of the true west.
Ann Sherman • Washington • waow
Ann Sherman is a contemporary painter and sculptor of horses and the human figure. Her work blends representational accuracy with artistic expression and freshness — capturing the essence of her subjects. She works in bronze, charcoal and oil.
Lynn Attig • California • waow
Painting the Still Wild West...
Lynn is an award-winning Western artist who enjoys capturing the beauty and traditions of California ranch life. She is co-founder, president emerita, and director of communications for the Pastel Society of Southern California; vice-president, exhibition chair and Signature member of the Pastel Society of the West Coast; juried member of the Pastel Society of America; and a member of the California Art Club and Pacific Arts Group. Lynn is also the founder and past director of the Rejoice in Art! Fine Art Fair & Exhibition (2015-2019) held in Redondo Beach, California. As a four-year invited artist to the Tehachapi Arts Exhibition and Sale (2022-2025), Lynn's work has been featured in Western Art Collector and American Art Collector magazines. Her paintings have been acquired by many collectors over the past two decades.
Kristy McNelly • Texas • waow
Born on a farm in Fremont, Michigan, Kristy McNelly’s early days were spent riding horses and playing in the woods along the creek. Art has been a long pastime since childhood. It is that love for nature and animals that is still carried into her work today as an oil painting artist. An active volunteer and director of the AgriCultural Museum and Arts Center in Boerne, Texas. Since 2002, Kristy has been enjoying putting on events and antique tractor pulls. Kristy can also be seen on back roads around Texas driving her Seafoam Green antique 1950 Ford Truck called “Seabiscuit”.
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.
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.
Brenda Whicker • Indiana • waow
Brenda Whicker is an impressionist painter of still life, horses and landscapes known for her painterly brushwork and her use of rich, dramatic color. Farm life, changing seasons, and the effects of natural light are recurring themes and inspiration in her oil and acrylic paintings. She is influenced by traditional still life painting from the Dutch Masters of the 1600s to French Academics of the 1900s.
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.
Bobbe Jones • Colorado • waow
“As an artist rooted in the rugged beauty of Southwest Colorado, I strive to capture the dynamic interplay between humanity, nature, and the land.” Working primarily in oil on linen canvas or panels, Bobbe’s paintings are a harmonious blend of realism and expressionism—each brushstroke a deliberate choice to evoke both the physical presence and emotional resonance of her subjects.
Bobbe’s compositions often feature birds in flight, antique trucks weathered by time, and the resilient animals and ranchers who define rural life. She is fascinated by the way strong lines and dynamic brushwork can convey motion, while careful attention to pattern, proportion, and rhythm brings unity to each scene. “Through these elements, I aim to freeze a fleeting moment—inviting viewers to feel the wind, sense the history, and connect with the enduring spirit of the West.”
Susan Eyer–Anderson • California • waow
Susan Eyer-Anderson is a California artist known for her oil and acrylic paintings that depict horses, wildlife, landscapes, and evocative western subjects. A realist artist, she often works from photographic references. She uses rich color and pays careful attention to light, form, and detail. She desires to capture both likeness and the heart and energy of her subjects.
Carol Lundeen • Minnesota • waow
Carol Lundeen is an oil painter specializing in animals, both wild and domestic. Her style is representational. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art from Northwest Nazarene College, Nampa, Idaho. She continued her studies with Robert Hagberg, Jay Moore, along with a host of other master artists.
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.