Kim Randleas (b. 1975) was born and raised in the remote mountains of Eastern Oregon, at the heart of historic Gold Rush country. Surrounded by the landscapes, people, and stories of the American West, she spent her childhood drawing with found charcoal, painting with watercolors, and exploring the high desert where family hikes often became lessons in regional history. Those early experiences fostered a lifelong fascination with the people and events that shaped the American frontier.

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An equally important influence came from a well-worn coffee table book, Techniques of the Artists of the American West. Filled with the work of Frederic Remington, Joseph Henry Sharp, N.C. Wyeth, William Robinson Leigh, Grace Hudson, and others, it became an early introduction to the rich tradition of Western art and planted the seeds for a lifelong pursuit of painting.

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After high school, Randleas spent sixteen years building businesses with her family before returning to painting in 2015. Encouraged by an unexpected gift from her father, an old easel discovered in a barn, she immersed herself in the study of oil painting. Less than a year later, she entered a regional museum exhibition, where her work received the People's Choice Award, marking the beginning of her professional career.

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Today, Randleas is creating Windows into the West, a lifetime body of work exploring the history of the American West through research, storytelling, and oil painting. Drawing from extensive historical research, travel, museum collections, and original source material, each painting contributes to a larger narrative, examining the remarkable individuals, defining moments, and enduring spirit that shaped the frontier. Rather than recreating history, she seeks to interpret it through a visual language that is both timeless and distinctly her own.

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Randleas lives and paints outside Canyon City, Oregon, where the landscape that first inspired her continues to shape her work. From her studio at the base of Canyon Mountain, she approaches each new collection with the same sense of curiosity that has guided her since childhood: a belief that there are still countless stories of the American West waiting to be discovered and painted.