Wendy Vaughan grew up in West Bloomfield, outside of Detroit, where her father was a car designer for Chrysler and one of the original designers of the Ford Thunderbird.  She won an art scholarship to the Allen R. Hite Institute at the University of Louisville and then graduated from Western Michigan University with a BA in painting.  After working in industry as an art director for 22 years, she started painting full time.  She has won various awards through the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, has been included in several full color art books featuring top artists, has been on the cover of several animal oriented magazines and was interviewed on a public television art program. Her fantasy animal oil paintings can be found in various art galleries and in many collections across the United States.
Throughout her work Vaughan imagines a time when the animals, not the humans, are the dominant force in an otherwise recognizable world. Vaughan has supposed, through her artwork, that certain human characteristics have transferred, or been imparted to the animals, so that they now have the ability to Create, Rationalize, Fear, Lead, Reason, Analyze, Love, and so forth. Vaughan’s work depicts the animals in a somewhat parallel existence to our own, in all their glory, and with their own stories to tell.