Writer Joseph J. Airdo // Photography Courtesy of Carol Lei Bendell
As an artist, instructor and visual storyteller, Carol Lei Bendell’s body of work reflects an array of geographic and cultural influences.
Although she now lives in North Phoenix, her previous residences throughout her more than 50-year career as an artist include Chicago, Scandinavia and Hawaii. In fact, she still maintains a traditional Danish summerhouse in the coastal village of Gilleleje, Denmark.
In addition to conducting workshops and organizing drawing figure groups for various arts groups, she is a teacher at Scottsdale Artists’ School Youth Academy and an active member of the Arizona Artists’ Guild.
Among the many museums at which her extensive interpretive portraiture and landscape work has been shown are the Shemer Art Center in Phoenix; the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson; the Phippen Museum in Prescott; and the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico. She is also represented by On the Edge Gallery in Scottsdale.
“An artist’s most important tool is his or her mind,” Bendell says. “The ability to observe, process or perceive shapes creativity. I love the process of making art. The finished product needs to be good, of course, but it is in the process that I find my happy place.”
Now, she is finding her happy place — and helping others find theirs — through portraits of the dogs, cats, birds, tortoises and other animals that bring purpose, constant companionship and unconditional love to many of our lives.
Behind the Canvas
The seeds of Bendell’s interest in drawing and painting were planted when she was just 2 1/2 years old.
“I had come down with pneumonia,” Bendell explains. “I was sad and felt terrible after the doctor had visited and injected me with antibiotics. My mother sat down with me at the dining table, took out paper and a crayon and started to draw. She showed me that she was drawing the line figures printed on her maternity blouse. She told me they were kachina dolls and then helped me draw one or two. I never forgot that moment of my mother interacting with me in such a way. I never stopped trying to draw after that.”
When she was 8 years old, Bendell’s best friend’s parents took her to the Cleveland Museum of Art.
“It was my first experience with a museum,” she says. “We saw an exhibit of portrait miniatures and I was entranced. I knew from that moment on that I wanted to be a portrait artist. I learned soon afterward that I had two adult cousins who were professional portrait artists. They had each attended ‘the best art school in Chicago.’ I thought, ‘If they can do it, then I will too.’”
Bendell then did exactly that, eventually graduating from the world-class School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she majored in prints and drawings after earning scholarship admission. While there, she was invited by the Field Museum to draw pot shards for its Department of Archaeology.
“I accepted the offer and enjoyed being part of the staff,” the artist says. “In my free time there, I sat and drew in front of the hundreds of different animal scenes on display,” the artist adds. “Of course, I still attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I was extremely fortunate to have Vera Berdich — who had interned with Picasso — as my etching teacher and mentor.”
Bendell continued her fine arts graduate studies at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology before moving in 1980 to Denmark, which served as a base to reinvent herself as an artist, with watercolors becoming her medium of choice.
One of her principal projects while in Denmark was a grant to create interior paintings of 11th–14th century Romanesque churches. However, her most important activity was in raising her daughter, Christa, a music prodigy.
To further improve her creative skills, Bendell pursued a Scandinavian education in medical anatomy and neuromuscular therapy — disciplines that emphasize the importance of structure beneath the surface and are equally essential to both buildings and bodies.
In 2007, she moved to Hawaii, where she lived for 12 years and taught art to students of all ages before she and her husband moved to Phoenix upon their retirement.
“When I was teaching visual art full time, my focus was on my students achieving success with their creative process,” Bendell says. “Most people will feel a sense of accomplishment if something is ‘chosen’ to hang on a wall, on display for all to admire. Because I believe we are all born creators, I strived to help my students find satisfaction honing their own creativity.”
The Eyes Have It
Although Bendell currently prefers painting with soft pastels or watercolors, she believes the most important part of her work is beginning with a good, solid drawing.
“When my drawing is good, then my painting will be fine,” she explains.
While her subjects throughout her more than 50 years as an artist have included people, skyscapes, nature-scapes and still-life paintings, much of Bendell’s most recent work revolves around our furry, feathered or scaled friends.
“Painting animal or pet portraits is not very different from painting people portraits,” the artist says. “It is still important to get a good likeness, a nice composition, show life in the eyes and suggest personality. The big difference is that it is much trickier to paint animal portraits from life, as animals do not necessarily all sit still.”
Photography, therefore, becomes a key component of her creative process.
“I try to let my subject relax and carry on with what they want to do — whether it is building a nest or searching for food,” Bendell says. “I make color notes in my head, which I will write down before I leave the scene. I try to initially blend with nature. When it is clear that I am not perceived as a threat, I begin to take lots of photos at their eye level, while trying not to disturb them. Immediately afterward, I jot down keywords that will help me remember the moment.”
And those moments are often remarkably rewarding, as was the case when the artist was commissioned to paint a portrait of a reportedly misanthropic 6-year-old German shepherd named Furio.
“The plan was to meet in a Phoenix park, and I would photograph him for the portrait,” Bendell explains. “I asked that the owners keep him on a leash, which they needed to do anyway in a public park. Unsurprisingly, the couple doted on their dog. I sat in the grass so he could look directly into my eyes. When I smiled and talked with him in a soft voice, he smiled. A big park in the sunshine is a happy place for dogs and owners. That is the way I painted him: joyful and in the moment.”
Having owned two cats and several parakeets of her own, Bendell is well aware of the supreme significance that people place on their pets, which is why she is committed to using her lifetime of skills as an artist to paint each one with the utmost care.
“My last cat died of old age in 2006,” she notes. “I still think of her every day. We had a wonderful Labrador retriever, Katey, when we lived in Hawaii. She lived to be 16. Our current pup, Ralphie, is a funny Cavalier King Charles spaniel, whose face reminds me of Buster Keaton.”
Bendell adds that pets are particularly important to retirees, for whom they become a best friend and a reason to get out of bed each morning with their need to be fed, walked, talked to and cared for.
“I know that many couples wait to have children or perhaps choose not to have children, but love and perceive their pets as their furry children,” she says. “Animals do not always live long lives but are so instrumental in happy times with their owners. Animal or pet portraits reinforce happy memories. We are all so lucky to have had a loving relationship with a pet. Commemorating them through a painting on the wall is a wonderful thing.”
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