(Cloudburst Over Poker Jim Ridge by Pamela Beaverson)

The rolling golden hills of the prairie states seemed endless on her first cross country trip. After countless hours on the road, the Colorado Rockies loomed large in the distance. The mountains were unimaginably large and beautiful as she reached Denver, but it wasn’t until her car turned north into the sun drenched open steppe of Wyoming that Pamela Beaverson’s love affair with the West began. She was 23 and headed to graduate school to study natural science illustration at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Eventually, she landed a job as an illustrator in Salem and began wandering across the mountains into Central and Eastern Oregon. The open skies, warm sun, and the smell of sagebrush country tugged at her heart and pulled her across the Cascades most weekends. Nothing was more beautiful to Pamela than the subtle greens and violets under the big blue sky in the high desert. The sight of a herd of pronghorn quietly browsing on bunch grass or loping effortlessly through the sagebrush made her heart leap joyously.

After 30 years of following the ebb and flow of life, Pamela finally found her way to make her home in Central Oregon. She paints the beautiful mountain peaks, lakes, and forests to the west, but she is always happiest and most inspired when her paintbrush mixes the muted greens and violets that are the language of the high desert.

Working primarily in oils, Pamela is driven to share the beauty of sagebrush country. So many see this huge chunk of the American West as a wasteland, undeserving of preservation or even a second glance. Pamela hopes to build a body of work that records and shares the hidden beauty of the country she loves most.