Adrienne Stein | Chasing Magic

By Bonnie Gangelhoff

THERE ARE MANY VISUAL stories to tell about the American West. There are the traditional tales featuring cowboys herding cattle across the range or artworks depicting horses kicking up their hind legs in a cloud of dust—scenes that have shaped our collective imagery of America’s last frontier. But there are also new narratives unfurling across the canvases of artists today.

For example, the Museum of Western Art, located in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, presents paintings by Adrienne Stein in an exhibition that opens August 22 with a reception from 5:30 to 8 p.m. “I hope the show gives our viewers and patrons a chance to understand that ‘Western art’ is bigger than the classics we’ve all grown to know and love,” says Darrell Beauchamp, executive director of the museum. “Adrienne paints with a passion that tells another story of the American West.”

Stein is known for her brilliant, color-splashed paintings. Her visual worlds are inhabited by a potpourri of figures, archetypes, symbols and nature. Whatever the subject, light plays a key role in her artwork. She frequently incorporates unique, unexpected hues such as striking turquoises and lavenders directly into skin tones, giving her figures an ethereal, glowing presence, Beauchamp says. “Adrienne’s creative use of light contributes to her vibrant and mythic storytelling,” he explains. “Her paintings celebrate the natural world. Through lush magical environments and figures, she blends reality and fantasy, expressed through a world of symbolic imagery.”

For this exhibition, Stein drew inspiration from artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Pelton and Maynard Dixon, who depicted the American West in original ways. But the style in Stein’s work, which she describes as “magical realism,” is all her own. She says, “There is an element of fantasy in the palette and subject matter of my paintings, yet they are grounded in the real world and rendered in a highly realistic style.”

The artist’s inspiration often springs, in part, from travel. And she has visited an array of far-flung locations, ranging from Paris to Beijing. “Often these are experiences of the divine and transcendent in the natural world,” Stein says. “In the case of this show—the vast awe-inspiring landscape of the American West as well as its unique forms—wildlife, botanical life, bones, antlers and other artifacts.”

Thus, when Stein saw an antler mount on display at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, she envisioned an enormous bird spreading its wings like an ancient protector. The display would later inspire the painting PTERYX, on view in the museum show. Pteryx in ancient Greek means winged or wing. The vegetation in the scene—hollyhocks, larkspur and thunderhead—are flowers and shrubbery that thrive in the Western landscape.

Several other paintings in the show bear titles from Greek mythology including HELIOS. Like PTERYX, HELIOS is a stunning, large-scale artwork that measures 60 by 60 inches. The scene is bathed in a warm, golden light that can evoke the sense of a sunrise in the eye of the beholder. In Greek mythology Helios is known as the god who personifies the sun. Hence, perhaps, the title.

Stein explains that the artwork is inspired by a scene in Wyoming’s Carbon County, located just north of the Colorado border. “There are so many fascinating bluffs and eroded cliffsides where you can look into deep geologic time by looking at all the multi-colored layers of minerals,” Stein says. “That part of the American West feels surreal, like the surface of another planet. I wanted the painting to have that otherworldly feel, as though the floating skull is a UFO or an angelic being.”

HELIOS and PTERYX are among the largest artworks in the exhibition. “I painted these in a monumental scale because I want them to feel immersive and cinematic when you look at them on the wall,” Stein says. “I want the paintings to give the viewer the sense of looking at something familiar, but the scale has transformed them into something mythic and sublime.”

The Greek titles in Stein’s paintings suggest a certain timelessness. In fact, it’s been said that Stein’s paintings “reanimate” the historical painting genres, creating a bridge between the past and the present and breathing new life into the old with her original imagery. The artist acknowledges that the pre-Raphaelite painters of the late 19th century such as John Williams Waterhouse (1849-1917) and John Everett Millais (1829-1896) have offered inspiration over the years. For the uninitiated, the pre-Raphaelites were a cadre of artists who revolutionized British art by rejecting formulaic academic styles in favor of employing intense colors and complex compositions. Their faithful depictions of Mother Nature speak to Stein’s artistic soul. “Their rich sense of story really calls to me,” she says. “I want to jump into and live inside the worlds of their paintings.”

No doubt, viewers of Stein’s current artworks may want to jump in and live inside the inviting world of her paintings. That would be fine with Stein, who notes, “It is important to me that the design of a painting is good enough to draw you in from across a room but also that the details are good enough to sustain your attention.”

Meanwhile, viewers can also expect a Stein artwork to bring together many sources and elements from different places to create her compositions. The painting titled ALCEA RUGOSA is a good example. In this work, Stein was inspired by a cluster of bright yellow hollyhocks at the Denver Botanic Gardens. “[Hollyhocks] feel like such an icon of the West,” she says. “The cliffs in the background are from Southern Utah, close to Capitol Reef National Park, a place of stunning and strange beauty. By making the hollyhocks large in the foreground, they take on a monumental significance. I wanted the paintings in the show to feel like icons, so the arched shape at the top immediately recalls Byzantine devotional icons.”

Surprisingly, Stein is not originally from the West. She was raised in York, Pennsylvania, and had little exposure to western terrain. But her husband, artist Quang Ho, is from Denver. Today, the couple maintains homes and studios in both places. Over the years Stein has spent a large swath of time on road trips with her husband and more recently also with their young son, Liam. The paintings in this exhibition, she says, are mainly inspired by her journeys through Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, California, Arizona, among other Western states.

Stein graduated magna cum laude from Laguna College of Art + Design in Southern California and later earned an MFA degree from Boston University. She has won numerous awards throughout her career, including honors from such prestigious organizations as the Portrait Society of America and the Art Renewal Center. In 2025 the artist’s painting RIVERBEND, a lush, 5-foot-tall figurative piece, won a top award at the New Salem Museum & Academy of Fine Art in New Salem, Massachusetts. RIVERBEND is currently on view at the Museum of Western Art.

When asked what she hopes her current show at the Museum of Western Art will convey, Stein replies, “I want to distill the profound experience of the American West into this body of work,” Stein says. “I seek to create a meditative and prayerful space for the viewer. My intention is for them to enter the museum and encounter my paintings as they would a sanctuary. Hopefully, they will experience expansive silence, a sense of deep time, death, resurrection, and most of all—beauty.”

Bonnie Gangelhoff is a Colorado-based writer and former Senior Editor of Southwest Art.

The Enchanted West of Adrienne SteinAugust 22-November 7Museum of Western ArtKerrville, TX(830) 896-2553museumofwesternart.com

This story appeared in the August/September 2026 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Subscribe today to read every issue in its entirety.

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