Women have made art in the West long before there were highways, galleries and easy access to art centers. They painted in the open fields, capturing the herds of cattle and the changing colors of the sky. They painted on canvases large enough to hold the depth and beauty of the Lone Star State. The West in Her Hands: Early Women Artists of Texas opened at the Citadelle Art Museum in Canadian, Texas, this September. The exhibition features 42 works by 29 women whose painting, prints and sculpture capture the landscapes, communities and everyday life of West Texas while helping establish an artistic culture across the region.
Anna Keener, Untitled (Saddleback Mountain), 1926. Oil on canvas board, 22 x 19 in.
“This exhibition gives us a chance to look at West Texas through the eyes of women who were here early, paying attention and putting what they saw on canvas and paper,” says Wendie Murfee Cook, executive director and curator at the Citadelle Art Museum. “They painted the canyons, ranches, flowers, churches and towns around them, but their contribution went much further than that. They helped create a place for art in West Texas.”
Geography shaped nearly every aspect of becoming an artist in the region. Roads were in rough condition and the major museums, art schools and exhibitions were hundred of miles away. For women, this meant early exposure to art often came primarily through books, publications, reproductions of Old Master paintings and other objects families carried with them.
Isabel Robinson, Untitled (Cows, Barn, and Windmill), 1927. Watercolor on paper, 16 x 12 in.
When railroads expanded into the region in the 20th century, women artists had the opportunity to venture to large cities with vibrant art scenes like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia to study new techniques, encounter major collections and learn from contemporary movements.
The journey out of Texas to discover more of the art world is encapsulated in artist Anna Keener’s story, who earned the first of many art degrees from Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, before attending summer sessions at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Juanita Tittle Pollard, Abilene Country (Mesquite in Spring). Acrylic on Masonite, 41 x 20 in.
When artists like Keener returned to their communities after experiencing the outside world, they took the skills and knowledge they gained and passed it on to area students, and organized local art association and exhibitions, filling the void they’d grown up in with color, texture and paint. Keener’s painting Untitled (Saddleback Mountain) will be on display in the show.
By the early 1920s, women were organizing art communities from Dalhart and Amarillo, to Lubbock, Abilene and San Angelo. The artists in this exhibition were keepers of a cultural and spiritual flame that spread across the American West.
Olive Vandruff, Untitled (Bluebonnets), 1945. Gouache on Masonite, 30 x 24 in.
The 42 works in The West in Her Hands bring together works in oil, watercolor, etching, lithography, gouache, pastel, acrylic, bronze and other media. Other artists in the show include Isabel Robison, Juanita Tittle Pollard and Olive Vandruff, to name a few.
During their careers, these women established themselves as professional artists whose work recorded what one contemporary writer described as the region’s “native surroundings and familiar customs,” preserving a visual history that might otherwise have gone unrecorded.
The West in Her Hands: Early Women Artists of Texas will remain on view through December 31, 2026. —
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