Ben Kendall Paints a Picture

Someone unwisely humblebrags about their artistic skills and you take the bait. When they obligingly doodle a horse on the back of an envelope, it looks like a spider scrawled with the wrong hand by a tilt-a-whirl drunk wearing a blindfold. You nod and fail to sound convincing, which you later regret. “Wow. Now that is art.” 

Then you have guys like Ben Kendall. The man’s work is startling, affecting, medicinal; visual storytelling in which you are dropped into the middle of the narrative – not as a partaker of, but as a partaker in. Kendall’s powerfully naturalistic work has the quality of that photograph in the movie Blade Runner, where the viewer enters the framed scene, turns a corner, and finds in the rendering things not immediately available to the naked eye.

“I went to school with so many great artists, and not everyone’s great at the same thing,” Ben says. “I was great at drawing, at perspective. I went to school with some guys that could paint. I can do what I can do – yes – I can paint. But I’ve seen magic.”

Your World in the Evening 

Dare I suggest the guy has seen, absorbed, and personalized the magic. On December 6, 4-8 pm, 3114 State Street in Santa Barbara (so many details!), see Ben Kendall clasping his hands in greeting and bowing reflexively as host of his art show’s opening reception. The show’s almost self-referential title is “The Place to Be” and consolidates that part of Kendall’s oeuvre that depicts – to deeply evocative effect – Santa Barbara and Montecito after dark. We all know the stations but have never seen them portrayed in a medium that so exalts the small hours beauty of these beloved places. Lucky’s, Harry’s, the post meridian SB Harbor viewed from the implausibly sweet Brophy Bros bar (typically through a warming dry martini haze, I might add), Kendall’s show is a particular gift to locals; a starlit celebration of the hangouts we’ve long adored, proffered in acrylic inks that pull you into the moonlit magic and present our familiar retreats as mood-altering fine art. 

“I was always much more of an advocate for value before color,” Kendall says, in one of several cryptic right brain pronouncements. “Value is the light to dark, how things read light to dark, and if you don’t have control over your values, then you don’t have control over your painting.” The media used in the show’s featured works serve up the striking value contrasts that give these nocturnes their contemplative power. “I finally settled on illustration board,” Kendall explains, “which holds the acrylic ink perfectly and has a nice antique white kind of tone, rather than a stark neon white.”

So, here we have yet another opportunity to interrogate the gifted. Yeah, this essay is about Ben Kendall. A few brushes, some daubs of paint; Kendall’s id sings its warming song, and we’ve little choice but to sing along. But the timeworn question will have to be answered. Why?

Perfect Circle

The story may be apocryphal, but Leonardo da Vinci is said to have been able to draw a perfect circle, freehand. Does this mean he spent his childhood drawing circles? Are artists self-discovered or self-made? More colloquially, did Kendall spend his childhood drawing on every blankish scrap of paper he happened upon?

“I started drawing as far back as I can remember,” he says. “I saw the movie Jaws – it must’ve been Jaws 2, one of the Jaws movies from the early eighties. I came home from the movie, and I remember drawing a big poster of the boat and the shark, and it was amazing. I recently saw it in a family photo, and I was like, ‘…huh, it’s not that amazing.’” He laughs. BUT … “I was four years old! It was good for a four-year-old. And so I think that if your motor skills are developed early like that, and you find you’re better at it than most, you’re going to want to do it more – and people are going to give you more attention when you do it.” The flywheel effect of this positive reinforcement is undeniable, as Kendall elaborates.

“It’s the outliers thing. The older you get in school, some kids are better at sports because they’re bigger, they’re stronger, they’re just better at it. They get more attention for doing sports. It’s similar to that.” This curated self-regard can run away with you. “I went to art school late, and I had this arrogance. You know, I’m an artist, art is natural, it can’t be taught.” Kendall flashes me a look of mild self-deprecation. “And then I went to art school, and that’s changed a little.” His self-described arrogance delayed Kendall’s formal dive into art training, and at one of the more prestigious institutions. “Luckily, by the time I got to art school I’d had a walk of life. I went to (Pasadena’s) ArtCenter College of Design when I was 29, nearly 30.” 

…okay. What were you doing in the meantime? Oh, and what lit this belated fire?

“…You could do greater things…”

Through the untracked centuries, from the first cave painter to da Vinci’s dad to a pal named Ashley, behind every great artist with potential there is an affectionately insistent booster, standing firm with fists on hips and saying something like “Dude! What’s the wait?!” Also – Ashley? Kendall the natural artist needed a little prodding.

“I was soldering and assembling electrical parts for three years through a job that my friend got me. And then from there I started painting with this amazing painter. His name is Jim Fodor, and he would paint these amazing murals and stuff, but he was an architectural draftsman, and he worked for this architect, Chris Dentzel of the Dentzel family (side note: the Dentzels are scions of the G.A. Dentzel Company, inventors in 1867 of the first fixed carousel in the U.S.). 

“Jim was a draftsman and he knew I wanted to do something more, or at least have a pencil in my hand. He was like, ‘Hey, I bet you’d be good at drafting.’” Kendall would parlay this suggestion into a meeting with Chris Dentzel and a six-year gig with his architectural firm. Then came Ashley.

“When I met my girlfriend at the time, she was like, ‘You could do greater things.’ She’d gone to college in New York and came back. I had never lived outside of Santa Barbara.” Kendall indicates his small studio with a gesture. The inference is clear, and Kendall confirms it. “I have her to thank for all of this.” Ashley Lambert, Kendall’s future wife, had the guy dialed in. 

“I was just a dumb kid in Santa Barbara who was good at art. She was like, ‘Hey, let’s take adult ed. You need to learn how to do Photoshop.’ I knew nothing about computers at the time. She signed us up. She attended one class on her own and never made another. She was by then down in L.A. working. But she got me to pursue art jobs on Craigslist. I started to learn, oh, there are art jobs out there in other cities, and if I can start to learn how to work digitally, I can get this work to them. 

And so I got a couple jobs rendering buildings or doing interior designer renderings with watercolor, little jobs like that that would pay a few hundred bucks.” Ashley’s intuition that Ben was short-changing his own talents had her suggest he go back to school; to the ArtCenter College of Design, of all places. He got in on the strength of his portfolio, knocked his academics out of the park and graduated as the school’s Salutatorian; a silver medal to the Valedictorian’s gold.

Listing his influences as Toulouse-Lautrec, Edward Hopper, N.C. Wyeth, and Norman Rockwell, Kendall’s work is varied and gorgeous and mesmerizing and, in the case of the upcoming The Place to Be, a revelation for locals who want their retreats lionized as art. 

He remains grateful for many things; his Ashley (at whose behest he has travelled all over Europe, soaking up even more artistic ballast), the inborn skills that catalyzed his calling, and his Salutatorian status having allowed him to neatly dodge an ArtCollege exit speech. 

“Luckily, someone in the photography department beat me out for Valedictorian, and his speech literally started ‘… when I was 16, I was in a car accident and I thought I’d never walk again…’ And I was like, go get it, buddy! That’s a way better speech than I was going to give!”  

The Place to Be Opening Reception will be on Saturday, December 6, from 4-8 pm.  The gallery (3114 State Street) is open from December 6-30, 2025.