J Pony Allen lives and works in Hopkins, Minnesota. He received his undergraduate art degree from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, with coursework from the Academy de Port-Royal, Paris, University of Paris IV, Cours de Civilization Francaise de la Sorbonne, and a Master of Fine Arts from Vesper College.

According to J Pony Allen, he was “born and raised in an interstitial space, a pocket universe between the IDS building and Amber Waves of Grain. He grew up in the wilds of Minnetonka where great mares once ran free, Dead Man's Hill swallowed sleds, and the Swamp and Woods held great treasure. The woods and swamp have shrunk, fully plundered. The hill has been capped with gardens and Dishes. And the horses have scattered West and East, North and South.”

Allen continues: “[My} work probes the delicious friction between organic growth and manufactured disruption. Inspired by discoveries of bush plane wreckage on barren high tundra, F250s abandoned in woodlands, Darth Vader's paternal admission, intrusive thoughts, irritated molluscs birthing nacreous gems, and stick framed barns caved in by giant's feet; these paintings are, in essence, bootleg interior & exterior landscapes. Like unauthorized recordings of Rock Gods, they document the collision of internal and external experience with a genuine spirit of fanaticism.”