THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 23, 1995 TAG: 9508220124
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LORI A. DENNEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
JUDY COWLING used to be a clock-watcher. She knew when it was time for work, time for lunch and, especially, time to leave.
These days, Cowling doesn't follow a clock and hasn't since she quit a career as a graphics artist and started her own company - Painted Ponies. According to her business cards, she offers ``Fabulous Custom Painted Furniture Interiors & Stuff.''
Cowling, 35, spends her days working full time creating pieces of art out of old furniture.
She's painted countless dressers, trunks, tables, headboards, hutches, walls and even highchairs.
You name it and she's painted it.
``I like to recycle old pieces,'' said Cowling, a Newport News native. ``It might not look like much in its original state but paint it up and it's an original piece of art.''
Cowling specializes in what she calls the ``smaller'' jobs, like a piece of furniture here and there, a wall, a door or even cabinet door knobs.
She can paint any design the customer wants, whether it's to match a piece of fabric or a hobby.
She prefers to work by appointment and always asks the customer to come and look through her portfolio to see what type of work she's capable of doing. After that, she and the customer usually meet at the customer's home to discuss a particular job or even go over the possibilities.
For a house call, Cowling charges around $50, depending on the location. After that, each painted piece is priced separately according to how in depth the work is or how big the article is.
One customer commissioned her to paint a chair with the family's three favorite pets on the back and their absolute favorite cat curled up into a ball on the seat.
She's copied a crystal pattern over to a hutch and has done theme work for children's rooms.
In her three years of business, there have also been an endless amount of wooden highchairs she's transformed from regular stained wood to folk-style patterns. She even painted one chair's tray to resemble a watermelon.
``No job is really too small,'' said Cowling, who added that she does not like the idea of repainting an entire house.
Often, she finds old pieces of furniture and uses her own whimsical imagination to paint them. These pieces she sells in the retail space of her store in Great Neck Plaza.
Currently, the shop holds two or three chairs that are painted in the folk art style. There's a chair that's painted black with bright yellow sunflowers for $200 and a trunk that's painted in various shades of green with big bright fish on top and on the sides for $600.
Cowling, a 1982 graduate of the College of William and Mary, routinely has three to four projects going at a time - a china hutch that's half-painted charcoal blue, a headboard that isn't painted at all yet and a blue picnic basket she just recently finished painting.
Her typical turn around for a what she calls a larger job, a sizable piece of furniture, is about a month. For smaller jobs, like knobs or accents, it's about a week.
Cowling's Painted Ponies shop originally opened three years ago in Newport News.
She had returned there after an eight-year stint as a newspaper advertising artist whose last address was Nags Head, N.C.
Her first location in Newport News featured a store with big windows. Her present place, tucked behind another set of shops off West Great Neck Road, is not as visible to customers.
That isn't something she minds because it gives her less time to chit chat with those just passing by and more time to paint.
``Everyone stops to chat and I wanted to get some work done,'' said Cowling. ``But I knew Newport News was the best place for me to establish a new business. I already had a clientele just from the people who knew me. However, I started off practically giving my work away until people came to trust me.
``People saw that I had a big sign and that I was paying rent someplace and I'm very responsible and prompt,'' added Cowling, who currently commutes from Newport News but has plans to be a Beach resident by September.
Three years ago, she decided to start her own company.
``I didn't have a car payment, no kids and no husband,'' said Cowling, who is currently helping to care for an ailing grandmother. ``And everybody wants something nobody else has, and for $400 you can have a piece of furniture that looks like a million bucks.''
The name Painted Ponies comes from Cowling's love of the appaloosa, a type of spotted horse with no two spots the same.
``Every spot's different, just like every piece of furniture I paint,'' she said. MEMO: Painted Ponies is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday
and ``anytime'' by appointment. Call 496-9546.
ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MORT FRYMAN
Judy Cowling will paint your furniture to match your decor, your
hobby or a piece of fabric.
by CNB