About WAA
One of the oldest continuously operating artist associations in the United States — rooted in Wyoming since 1934
Who we are
The Wyoming Artists' Association is a statewide nonprofit community of painters, sculptors, and creatives united by a love of art and the place that inspires it.
We hold an annual convention every May — rotating through Wyoming's cities and towns — where members gather to exhibit work, compete for awards, learn from accomplished workshop artists, and spend a few days doing what they love alongside people who understand why it matters.
Membership is open to any artist who wants to be part of it. You don't have to be famous.
You don't have to be full-time.
You just make art!
Since 1938
"Established to broaden and deepen the creative art experience of the people of Wyoming."
The association is committed to education and to preserving Wyoming's art tradition — a tradition that literally shaped America's perception of the West through paintings, drawings, and illustration before photography existed.
It all began when PWA projects established art galleries in 10 Wyoming towns and individual art groups formed. We called ourselves the Wyoming Artists' Association and held a convention on Casper Mountain in May 1940.
The PWA projects collapsed during WWII, but rising from the ashes the first official WAA Convention was held in Rock Springs, May 1955. Our convention has been held beginning of May ever since.
Read about our roots here [...]
Our Mission
"Established to broaden and deepen the creative art experience of the people of Wyoming."
1
Education
Every year, the WAA brings accomplished working artists to Wyoming to teach. Our Annual Convention workshops cover a range of mediums — oil, watercolor, mixed media, sculpture — taught by instructors with both the technical skill and the teaching ability to make the time genuinely worthwhile.
For artists in a state as geographically spread out as Wyoming, these workshops are often the best access to serious instruction available anywhere close to home.
2
Events
The Annual Convention is the centerpiece of the WAA calendar — a juried art show, Quick Draw and auction, workshops, and an awards reception, held every May in a different Wyoming city.
Since 1955, the convention has traveled to Casper, Sheridan, Dubois, Cheyenne, Cody, Jackson, Riverton, Laramie, and dozens of communities in between. It is one of the longest-running arts events in Wyoming history.
The WAA has also maintained a Congressional Show — artwork exhibited in the Washington, D.C. offices of Wyoming's Congressional delegation — and a University of Wyoming Traveling Exhibit, both longstanding traditions that carry Wyoming art beyond state lines.
3
Members
The WAA's approximately 75–100 members are working artists from across Wyoming — every corner of the state, every medium, every career stage. The association exists to make their work more visible, their skills sharper, and their connection to other Wyoming artists stronger. Membership includes exhibition opportunities, workshop access, a listing in the WAA online artist directory, and a place in a community that has been showing up for Wyoming artists for seven decades.
THE WESTERN ART HERITAGE
Wyoming artists have always had a larger role to play.
Before photography made it easy, the American public's understanding of the West came almost entirely through artists. Painters rode alongside explorers and surveyors. Illustrators worked by lantern light in frontier towns. Their canvases and drawings — hung in Eastern galleries, printed in newspapers, exhibited at world's fairs — shaped the national imagination of what lay beyond the Mississippi River.
Frederick Remington captured the movement and drama of frontier life with an accuracy no photograph could yet achieve. Carl Rungius spent decades painting Wyoming's wildlife and landscapes with a naturalist's precision and a painter's eye, producing a body of work that remains among the finest Western wildlife art ever made. Thomas Moran's paintings of Yellowstone were instrumental in convincing Congress to create the world's first national park.
These artists didn't just document the West.
They built its mythology, defended its wildness, and made the rest of the country care about it.
That tradition belongs to Wyoming.
The Wyoming Artists' Association was founded in the spirit of it — and carries it forward today in the work of its members, in the workshops it hosts, and in the exhibitions it brings to communities across the state.
We are not a footnote to that history.
We are its continuation.