Britny Rayzor, known as Brit Lee Art, has been a paint and sip instructor at the Bluebird Cafe in Glenwood Springs for three years.

The first Brushes at the Bluebird class she taught is particularly memorable for Rayzor. “I started setting up for class and realized that I had forgotten all of the paint brushes,” she said. “I actually left, and I drove to Walmart as quickly as was legal, and then looked probably like a psychopath as I scooped 200 paintbrushes in my arms and ran to the checkout and back to the Bluebird as quickly as I could. I was late for my own first paint class. But it ended up being so hilarious and memorable that people just kept coming back.”

Now she teaches the class twice a month, showing students how to paint innocuous images of animals like Highland cows or goldfish and cozy holiday scenes of ghosts or snowmen while they enjoy a complimentary coffee or tea.

To Rayzor, teaching is more than a fun source of income — it’s a way for her to share her passion for art and help others through the messy, imperfect and emotional process of artistic creation.

“When people walk in, I introduce myself, and I say, you know, I’m the art teacher, but you’re not being graded. This is Justin Bishop. He owns the place,” Rayzor said. “We’re just here to have a good time. And you can just see the worry kind of melt off of people’s faces.”

Rayzor never insists that her students follow her instruction — instead, she arms them with a paintbrush, canvas and paints, and gives them a safe space to express themselves through art.

“If you don’t even want to paint this, you don’t have to. I say, sometimes you need to just come in and paint, for painting’s sake,” Rayzor said. “And I have had people that have gone completely off of the rails for good reason.”

Some of her paint and sip students are enjoying a night out with their friends, while others are grieving and crave creative emotional release.

“I’ve had two or three people come in directly after a breakup,” Rayzor said. “One girl just painted red, and I let her, and I just let her get all of her feelings out. She said it was almost like an art therapy session where she just felt like nobody was bothering her and she could just get all of her feelings out.”

“I am the teacher, and I do instruct, and I do go through step by step and line by line, so they know how to make a cow,” Rayzor added. “I mean, you’re paying to be taught, so I will teach that. But it’s also a peaceful place to make a beautiful mess if you need to. And there’s no pressure that it has to be perfect.”

A long-time resident of the Roaring Fork Valley, Rayzor’s love for art developed while she attended Glenwood Springs Middle School, long before she began leading the coffee-fueled paint sessions at the Bluebird.

“I always tell people my favorite Christmas present growing up was when my parents discovered that I liked drawing, they got me a duffel bag full of art supplies,” Rayzor said. “I felt like I had won the lottery just to have a huge box of colored pencils and a giant pad of paper. I could wheel it around and paint outside like the real artists do.”

Her passion for art deepened while she was in high school, and her acrylic and watercolor paintings became a way for her to express her joy.

“I got really involved in our local church…and I really became passionate about wanting to create something that would shine that joy and that light that I had obtained,” Rayzor said. “I started painting things that made me happy, that showed joy. Going to the (Glenwood Springs) High School, it was not always looked on with the response that I wanted, but that never stopped me from wanting to create art and from wanting to shine that joy to people who would see it.”

Rayzor remembers her murals being painted over and her artwork taken down while she was in high school. “I had heard there had been some complaints that it was too religious,” she said. “It was just me wanting to spread the joy and the light that I had learned and I had obtained. It was rough in high school. They would take my stuff down from the art shows.”

“There’s a lot of other things I could have gotten into in high school, and art was probably one of the best venues to get my emotions out,” she added. “Even when things were going bad, I was like, Okay, well, now that’s just going to inspire me to paint something else.”

Rayzor left Colorado to attend Rhema Bible Training College in 2010. She returned three years later with a degree in worship composition and a passion for art that had only grown. Now, she lives in Parachute and spends her time teaching painting classes up and down the Roaring Fork Valley, creating digital art and acrylic paintings, and raising her two children.

Rayzor, who is expecting her third child, will teach her last Brushes at the Bluebird paint and sip class of the year on Sept. 28. She anticipates returning to the Bluebird, and her other paint and sip ventures, in March 2025.

“(Art) has nothing to do with being perfect. I try to produce beautiful art whenever I can, but every artist will notice their own mistakes,” Rayzor said. “But it’s not about the perfection, it’s about having fun and learning from those mistakes so that you can progress and enjoy the future of your art.”