Raina Verhey is a landscape oil painter based out of Central Oregon. Self-taught, she began painting in 2019, highly influenced by impressionists such as Van Gogh and Hokusai. While working in bold impasto abstracts, she began to feel drawn to the American West, inspired by Maynard Dixon and Ernest Blumenschein to dig deep into the art of plein air and the study of light on the bare landscapes. In 2021, Verhey took to wandering with a camera and a paintbrush in tow, scouring the American West for lonesome outlooks and wild movements of land, allowing her eye to grow as well as her oil painting practice. Her subject focus tends to look at unique, solitary views of stone and sky, speaking to the sacredness of the mundane and the poignant nature of arid spaciousness.

With no higher education, Verhey has carved her way into the art world through rigorous practice and self-funded residencies through Oregon. Her career has been driven by representation with Space in Common (Sisters, Oregon), commissioned work held in public spaces, community auctions, group showings in local galleries, participation in Coors Art: Young Guns 2024, and self-promoted open studio sales. 

Verhey’s work seeks to connect to the Spirit that holds the land and us along with it. Her pieces are intended to be a vessel, to hold space for the raw, the rugged, the honest, the gutural, the genuine of life and humanity.

She is currently self-represented and working out of a private studio in Bend, Oregon.