From an oil painting of Santa Claus and Jesus sharing a chairlift at Alyeska Resort, to a brown bear sipping on a brewski off the beaten path, Scott Clendaniel of Real Art is Better has fun with it.
Clendaniel Is a full-time artist in Anchorage whose work is inspired by Alaska and his respective hobbies. He has been a homebrewer for over 20 years and is an avid biker. His interests are reflected throughout his paintings, from mountainscapes in the background to frosty pints in the foreground.
In 2006, he worked at Arctic Brewing Supply part time and learned about fermentation.
“I stopped working there because my art business was not getting the attention it deserved,” Clendaniel said. “When I left I made 10 larger beer paintings, 12 by 24 inches. It was a successful show called ‘The Color of Beer.’”
He sold all but one. That gave Clendaniel the push he needed to lean further into his painting. He resumed illustrating and made a show called “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”
“I did a beer painting every day in 2014, it was a project called the ‘Year of Beer,’” he said. “I still make beer paintings [as] it is a large part of my commissions.”
In addition to commissions from clients, Clendaniel does his fair share of vendors markets in the Anchorage area, including the Little Fish Makers Market, the Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival, Anchorage Brewing pop ups, and the Girdwood Forest Fair.
“My wife and I started selling artwork online through Etsy in 2012,” Clendaniel said. “I make the art, and Maria Benner, my wife and business manager, does the listings and handles the e-commerce.”
Clendaniel and his wife have been on two separate 2,000-mile, self-supported bicycle tours, which have shown up in a lot of his work.
“You will find a lot of paintings of bicycles, and tandems in my collection. We did one of the tours on a tandem [bike],” Clendaniel said.
The couple also built a log cabin from scratch in McCarthy, so Clendaniel says that Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve and Kennecott Mine are popular locations in his art.
“I also make many airplane paintings since [Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve] is an aviation destination,” Clendaniel said. “I paint what clients want for any commission and planes are a recurring theme.” Clendaniel is currently working on his first album cover for Violet Pilot, a self-described “neo-psychedelic Americana rock” band from Colorado. He wrote about his experience with musician Michael Kirkpatrick on his website.
Sam Davenport is a writer residing in Anchorage. She's a leo and a plant-person, and loves spending quality time with her dog, Aspen. She is a Real Housewives fan and has been called a Bravo historian.
