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.

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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Barbara Nuss • Maryland • waow

Barbara Nuss is an award–winning oil painter of landscapes and still life scenes.  She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree Syracuse University, the Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore.  She began her art career at a graphic artist and illustrator. 

Nuss is the author of the book, Secrets to Composition.  She taught still life and landscape painting at her atelier from 1983 to 1996.  She continues to share her skills through plein air workshops and atelier teaching.

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Ni Zhu • California • waow

Ni Zhu turned to painting after studying law at Beijing University and pursuing graduate studies in the U.S. and Canada. Changing her career path, she honed her passion for the media by attending classes at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and taking workshops with master painters, ultimately earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2020.  Zhu’s academic and creative pursuits from law to art and personal transition from China to North America have informed her practice as an artist. 

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Christine Drewyer • Maryland • waow

Christine Drewyer takes great joy in painting the powerful tranquility of the Rural American landscape or the beautiful, peaceful beasts of our planet.  She hopes we will always reside in a world where we can enjoy these simple pleasures.  She seeks to create art that will transport the viewer beyond the senses, free of thought and self-consciousness.  The paintings then become an Instrument through which the viewer and the artist glimpse the joyful oneness of which we are all a part.

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Landscapes, Skyscapes, Pastels WAOW . Landscapes, Skyscapes, Pastels WAOW .

Katherine Irish • New Mexico • waow

Katherine Irish made a conscious decision to contribute beauty to the world through art when she returned to New Mexico. The infinite variety of color and abstract patterns found in New Mexico skies offer a limitless source of inspiration. Cloud composition and colors are ephemeral. However, what is constant is that the beginning and end of each day is marked by the rising and setting of the sun. The beauty found in the skies inspires us.  Irish’s paintings are an effort to bring focused attention on our shared connection with the natural order.

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Elizabeth Rouland • Colorado • waow

Elizabeth Rouland O'Dell earned her B.A. in art from the University of California, Santa Cruz, graduating with honors in 1991.  She worked with printmaking techniques including intaglio etching, drypoint, and monotypes during her college years. More recently, she has returned to focus on oil painting, and she is ever enthralled with the challenge of interpreting the world around her through color and texture. 

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Lori Cusick • Texas • waow

Lori Cusick loves to create art of the land.  Her style is colorful and stylized.  She received her Bachelors of Fine Art degree from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn,  New York.

Her process begins on location with oil paints and canvas in tow.  Leaving the studio behind and working in the great outdoors provides and endless source of inspiration. 

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Elizabeth Sage • Arizona & Colorado • waow

Elizabeth Sage honed her self-taught ability to see and render the most difficult of images and precious of moments through a corporate career in graphic design for over 20 years.  In 2000 she changed her calling and passion to full time professional fine artist, creating powerful imagery and stories on canvas.

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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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Susan De’Armond • California • waow

Susan De’Armond turned her passion for art into a serious pursuit of a fine art career in 2007.  Plein air painting takes her back to memories of trekking through the woods on family outings, or memories of her grandmother tending her garden filled with her irises and lilacs.  When De’Armond gets out into the woods or the wild, she says it feels like coming home. 

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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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Heather Coen • Arizona • waow

Heather Coen is most renowned for her mastery of western wildlife, desert, mountain and water images.  Many layers of oil paint or pastel go into her works, creating a third dimension in each original piece.  The subject matter changes and varies from a study of a single flower to Alaskan wide–open expanses.

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Jenifer Cline • Colorado • waow

It is the connection, the joy – the reluctance to leave the scene that inspires Jenifer Cline to paint.  She considers the sense of place, the effects of light and the linkage of heart and soul to the earth as the most important aspects of her work.  She paints exclusively in oils en plein air. 

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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. 

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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. 

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Lani Browning • Maryland • waow

Lani Browning, an award winning plein air oil painter for over twenty– five years, is known for her distinctive skill with colors, and the quiet elegance and soft tonalism of her paintings. Her travels around the country and abroad, and her love of the land have contributed to her focus on the landscape. Her years of experience show in her confident and mature brushwork. 

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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.

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Tina Bohlman • Texas • waow

A Texas native, Tina Bohlman has used her home state as both the inspiration and the canvas for her art.  A self-taught artist, Bohlman is well versed in several mediums but favors watercolor and oil to create breath–taking plein air paintings and brilliant rural landscapes. 

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