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.
Diane Fechenbach • Colorado • waow
Diane Fechenbach’s artistic passion is dramatic light and shadow; and clean, saturated color. She is particularly interested in the effect of light on snow, trees, rocks and water. She works in a variety of media, including pastel, oil, and watercolor. Her subjects are varied, but she particularly enjoys painting en plein air.
Judy Fairley • Washington • waow
Judy Fairley is pastel and scratchboard artist, living and working in Washington. She grew up in Clarkston, where she and her twin sister helped on the family's horse and cattle ranch. Her experiences while growing up provided her with endless inspiration that she has shared in her numerous artworks shown and exhibited throughout the United States and Canada.
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.
Sue Wipf • Minnesota • waow
Sue Wipf worked on her parents' farm and spent time pondering the skies and the beauty around her. That experience continues to influence her values and her perspective on the world around her. Her love for nature is expressed in her plein air paintings and studio work. The artworks of Vermeer, Sargent, Turner, and Sorolla have influenced her. She has studied at the Schroeder Studio and taken workshops from other master artists.
Laura Pollak • North Carolina • waow
Laura Pollak is an award–winning, fulltime, professional fine artist. She works primarily in oil and pastel. Her art practice explores landscapes of the earth and constellations, as a continual search for her place in the universe. Her artworks run the gamut from realism to explorations of the abstract.
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.
Nancy Harkins • Oklahoma • waow
Nancy Harkins is a watercolorist and graphite artist from Oklahoma. Her style is realist and her subjects are wide ranging. Her award–winning works have been featured in the watercolor anthology, Splash 19: The Illusion of Light, and featured in two books, Seasons of Life and Seasons of Love. Her paintings are avidly sought for private and corporate collections.
Kristen Federchuk • Canada • waow
Kristin Federchuk a self-taught artist. She practiced drawing by studying the works of artists she admired. She feels that her art career is what she was created to do. She experiences great joy and excitement as she brings each painting to its ultimate fruition. Federchuk’s subjects are varied, preferring to be free to explore and paint the beauty around her.
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.
Janice Wright • Colorado • waow
Janice Wright is originally from Western Canada, but now calls Arvada, Colorado her home. She is a Visual Communications graduate from the Alberta College of Art of Canada. Wright worked as a graphic designer for over fifteen years. A one year residence in Europe provided her the opportunity to see paintings that previously she had only see in art history books. Profoundly moved by the experience, she stopped producing commercial art and began her fine art career.
Sharon Grubbs • North Carolina • waow
Sharon Grubbs finds inspiration in people and places throughout North Carolina’s Piedmont region. Her paintings range from traditional rural landscapes and images of local farmers, representing the area’s strong agricultural roots, to works featuring members of the many ethnic groups who have introduced new cultures to the area, even as they become an integral part of it.
Gloria Chadwick • California • waow
Gloria Chadwick finds joy in the wildlife sketching possibilities at the world–famous zoos, aquariums and wonderful coastline of the San Diego, California area, of which she is a native. She is a master painter working in oils, acrylics, and watercolors.
Chadwick is a dedicated enthusiast of wildlife conservation and delights to create art that brings attention to the animals—especially endangered species. Her works have been accepted in many juried shows and festivals and have won numerous awards.
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.
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.
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.
Karen O’Brien • Washington • waow
Karen O’Brien is a contemporary abstract colorist. She uses a unique layering technique to create her non-objective, abstracted landscapes that creates an interplay of texture, color and form to create visual vibration.
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.
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.
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.
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.