Anee Ward & Co.’s new venture includes fashion, furnishings and fine art

Put a New York City/Hong Kong whiz kid together with the limitless beauty of painter A. C. Ward and you get a whammo marketing concept bigger than both of them. Namely, Anee Ward & Co., a design house and fine art gallery located in El Prado, just four miles north of Taos Plaza.

For the past 25 years, locals have known Ward through her various galleries in Arroyo Seco and in the town of Taos, or they’ve met on the slopes or the golf course. But it wasn’t until last summer that entrepreneur Blake Dunlap and Anee (pronounced ah-nee) Ward officially teamed up to create an ambitious design company based on more than 20 years’ worth of Ward’s iconic imagery of Taos and other exotic cultures, locales and pastimes.

At their Overland Ranch showroom/gallery, it’s clear this is an idea whose time has come — one that makes you wonder why it hasn’t happened before. Taos is a natural for this.

Lining the walls are Ward originals, thematically grouped with various product reproductions of the original images: pillows, shower curtains, clothing, cards, puzzles, small and large giclées and more. (A giclée is a technology for fine art or photograph reproduction.)

Colors can be highlighted or pulled-out by designers and buyers to harmonize or punch up local decór, mixing and matching to the buyers’ choice or design scheme.

At their fall grand opening, Dunlap said one family was delighted to find their “original” imagery repeated across various furnishings offered in the showroom, adding even more energy to the original hanging in their home, a painting of their threesome on a memorable Taos golf afternoon.

Ward’s abstracted imagery is an expressionistic echo of her abstract painter and teacher Frank Hewitt. She says viewers are able to identify their own features in a piece despite the abstraction, and often, she says, painters approach her at openings complimenting her as a painter’s painter, remarking on her brushwork and the sheer joy in her subject matter.

Unique background, partnership

Ward says it’s Dunlap’s background in corporate law and marketing-mindedness that brings a level of professionalism not generally seen in non-corporate endeavors of local art gallery sales.

Dunlap reports over 13 years, mostly in Hong Kong, primarily working with startup companies ready to go public for the first time. Raised in the Midwest (by now Taos-glass-artists Roy and Jane Dunlap), he found Taos when skiing in Colorado and never wanted to go anywhere else. He did an early stint at Taos Ski Valley and at the primordial Taos web start up, La Plaza, before heading into domestic and foreign marketing.

The entrepreneurial itch got really bad last season, they said, when he and Ward connected working at Taos Ski Valley.

“Anee’s work is so accessible,” Dunlap says, “you just know it would be so easy” – meaning the images are a natural for hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, dude ranches and for decor and gift-giving and as glorious travel memorabilia to add to private homes and getaways. The work is a way to incorporate beloved “themes” of visitors’ travels into their otherwise normal, if sometimes humdrum, everyday lives.

Dunlap’s “easy” is what Taoseños think of as typical Taos. Ward perfectly captures Taos trucks and motorcycles (a big draw for locals). These cultural icons appeal to her to express what she calls, “The Soul in the Machine,” something she never grows weary painting, each vehicle having its own distinct personality and/or “soul.”

Drawing since age 17, with formal training in studio art and English literature, its easy to see where Ward’s poetics engage her aesthetic.

Her outdoor series includes sports, most often skiing, golfing, fishing and equestria; sailing and beaches in Hawaii and other points tropical; a “critters” series with fluffy roosters, chickens, mules, obstreperous Tecate-box-eating Taos goats, ski patrol dogs, former “Dog Town” of Arroyo Seco, dogs in golf carts, dogs with Santas – you name it, if it has heart, she paints it – not to mention people and pet portrait commissions.

Notable, too, is the fact that this is a business relationship, not a life-partner relationship. They both identified that each wanted to work with the other – Dunlap representing A. C. Ward’s work in popular commercial outlets and product strategies.

“One thing that made it attractive to me,” Dunlap said, “was that we had the culmination of 20 years of art to start from and Anee has been freed up to do even more. We didn’t have to create images from the get-go.”

So rather than be separate, they chose to work together, synergistically being more than either could be alone.

“In upcoming events we’ll be featuring Thursday night soirees, where we’ll stay open late, like salon evenings,” Ward said.

Their festive “Holiday Reception” with light refreshments was Dec. 10. Overland Ranch is located at 1405 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, in El Prado. For more information visit aneeward.com. To see more of Ward’s individual paintings, go to acwardart.com.