Painter Melissa DiNino’s exquisitely rendered watercolors offer a fresh perspective on the dramatic landscapes of the remote American West, and the humans and animals that inhabit it. Informed by her time spent working as a range rider in rural Montana, her work approaches those rugged ranch lands with a tender, feminine lens, centering the human and non-human relationships that make existence in a harsh environment possible. Her intimate portraits poignantly capture the quiet beauty found in connections between horse, rider, and the land.

In her words, her work “explores the softness found in a life that is often hard — one that is rooted in the rhythms of the landscape on which it relies — and exposes the beauty and simplicity of those moments that are easily overlooked.”