Gazing into Julia Evans’ abstract paintings is a similar experience to seeing visions in the inkblots of a Rorschach test. Gazing into one, you could see a pirate ship … or a hammock … or a chalice. I could’ve sworn that the hazy shapes of another painting depicted a basketball player leaping for a dunk.
Evans calls her artistic process a dialogue. As she applies paint, continually rotating the canvas, the conversation goes down unexpected avenues. Once the piece is complete, the dialogue continues as viewers create their own interpretations.
“I had some people in one day, a couple and a little boy … This little one, he was kind of pinging off the walls,” Evans recalled. “Somehow, I managed to get his attention, and I got him to come over and tell me about [my] paintings and what [he saw] in them … We’re just sitting down there, and he’s telling me all these stories and talking about what he sees.”
Along with Tammy Meeske, Ed Penner and Terri Sanchez, Evans owns the Blue Pony Artists & Gallery in Old Colorado City. The hybrid studio and gallery opened in spring 2023 and is now entering its third year of operation.
You may have wandered past the Blue Pony and been surprised to see the artists out in the open, hard at work at their easels. It’s like watching a chef make your meal on a teppanyaki grill mere inches away from you.
“When we first moved in, we were a little worried about how we were going to interact with the public and create the art … We were really worried it would be draining,” Meeske confessed. “[But] the public gives back to us. They fill us up. They validate us. It’s the most incredible experience for me to talk to people.”
The unusual model of the Blue Pony allows its artists to tell their own stories, fostering greater rapport with customers than would be possible for a traditional gallerist. They’re also adept at selling the work of their colleagues, whom they’ve gotten to know incredibly well over dozens of hours working alongside each other.
In contrast to Evans’ abstract dreamscapes, Terri Sanchez excels at plein-air landscapes and intimate portraits of nature inspired by Colorado locales, from the San Juan Mountains to Ouray.
In an impressionistic style, Meeske depicts wildlife (often, horses she observed from rodeo stands). Much like a van Gogh, each mark of the brush is visible. Meeske used to paint hyperrealistically, but as she’s gotten older, she’s loosened her grip.
Rounding out the Blue Pony’s quartet is the storyteller, Ed Penner, who takes characters he’s crossed paths with and gives them new life on the canvas, from a meek farmer to a fearful boy at a piano recital.
One of Penner’s pieces, a LEGO Stormtrooper bicycling on the moon, brought in a lot of foot traffic. Though Blue Pony artists and customers alike were sad to see the Stormtrooper leave the gallery, its sale last year to a young man who saved up $800 for the painting was incredibly validating.
Although sales keep the meter running, the Blue Pony exists as a studio space first and a gallery second. That’s why the Blue Pony doesn’t have fixed hours – to allow the artists to treat the endeavor as a creative pursuit rather than a hefty responsibility.
That’s not to say opening and running the gallery has been easy. The building used to be a tattoo parlor, which required extensive renovations, mostly performed by the artists in one week. They were open just in time for April 2023’s First Friday Art Walk.
Now that they’re in their third year, the Blue Pony artists hope to improve their marketing and communication with other galleries to make Old Colorado City an even more attractive destination for the arts. It’ll take all four artists pulling their weight to make that dream possible.
“The thing that it takes in here is for everybody to be self-motivated … you’ve got to paint new art. You’ve got to hang new art. You’ve got to move it around. You’ve got to market it on social media. You’ve got to frame it or not frame it, put price tags on it,” Meeske said. “You need four people that buy into the vision of what this is. There’s no gallery owner. It’s up to us.”
