Anita Louise West

Growing up in Kansas City and painting from an early age, Anita Louise West studied art throughout high school and college. She received her BA in Art at the University of Missouri and continued postgraduate work painting on a scholarship at the Kansas City Art Institute and earned her teaching certificate.

After teaching art in public schools in Kansas, California and Texas for fifteen years Anita Louise opened her own studio gallery in Tyler Texas and worked full time with her own painting. She pursued painting in water media taking time to teach adults and sell her paintings.

Anita Louise moved to Santa Fe in 1993 to follow her artistic interests and enlarge her art territory in the Southwest. After working in water media for fourteen years, she has returned in earnest to her first love, oils. Concurrently, she is also expanding into the medium of pastel, which offers the best of drawing and painting.

Having won first place at the Mill Ave Exhibition in Tempe, Arizona and numerous other awards, Anita Louise co-authored a book “Painting the Pastel Landscape.” She has been invited to show her work at the Panhandle Plains Museum in Canyon, Texas and the “Collectors Classic Show” at Mockingbird Gallery in Bend, Oregon. She also participates in the Oil Painters of America shows and has been a featured artist at the Pasadena California Art Material Expo.

Anita Louise loves to paint in plein air and does so regularly. Traveling to many group events in California, Colorado and Arizona brings variety to her on-location pieces. She also works in the studio painting still life and portrait.

Her works are primarily impressionistic landscapes combined with floral still life, which highlight her strong sense of color and textural qualities. The joyful expression of her love of life and art through her profession manifests in all she does. For her, composing art is truly from the heart and clarity of vision that she strives for.

Anita Louise is also an art teacher. Teaching since 1965, first with the Parks and Recreation Department in Kansas City, Missouri, then in public schools from 1966 until 1987. She now operates a teaching studio gallery, offering private and nationwide workshops.

Artist’s Statement:

As an award winning artist, Anita Louise West continues a lifelong career creating and showing her paintings, and yet feels she is at a beginning. Painting in watercolor for fourteen years, she has now returned to focus on her first love, oil painting. Using the finest of linen mounted on panels, she paints landscapes on location. Being in tune with the beauty of the outdoors brings a peaceful feeling to her work. Through her use of brilliant color and active brushwork she conveys her love of nature.

The joyful expression of her love of life and art through painting is the essence of her work. She paints jewel-like impressionistic scenes of rural life, colorful gardens and peaceful themes of flowing water. These scenes coupled with vistas of mountains, the California coastline and the great Southwest add variety to her refreshing work.

Anita Louise is originally from Kansas City and moved to Santa Fe in 1993. She has found her new home to be an inspiring and historic journey through the art world. “So many artists have painted here. It truly is a place where you can tap into the stream of other wonderful artists who have painted in Santa Fe.” Anita Louise travels and co-teaches with Albert Handell nationwide. She finds inspiration in the places she visits as well as her Santa Fe home.