Scott Clendaniel has lived in Anchorage, AK since 1987. Clendaniel has always been a creative soul, and was lucky enough to have a mother who encouraged him to become an artist. He studied art in college and graduated with a Bachelors in Fine Art from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. There were a couple years when his fine art career took a back seat to an eight-to-five graphic designer job at an office, but he quit the job in 2005 to pursue a fine art career full-time. This encouraged his wife, Maria Benner, to also free herself from the rigid lifestyle of a traditional employee. In 2009, after Benner quit her job, the couple began a multi-year traveling adventure. They rode their tandem bike along the Pacific Coast from Canada to Mexico, toured around Thailand, Japan, and Taiwan, and rode bicycles across northern Europe. Between each trip, they came back to Alaska to spend summers in McCarthy, a small town in Wrangell – St. Elias National Park, to build a log cabin on their 10-acre wooded property.
After getting the “traveling bug” out of their system, the couple decided to focus full time on Clendaniel’s fine art career. Benner became the Business and Marketing Manager, and Clendaniel’s focus is on painting.

Artist Statement

Scott Clendaniel works as an artist full time in Anchorage, AK. Clendaniel is an artist because he enjoys telling stories through his paintings, and he likes to create beautiful images. His inspiration comes from interesting shapes, or forms in his surroundings, whether they are mechanical objects, or the sun setting behind a grove of aspen trees. He catalogs these images either in his brain, or with a camera. Then he takes the images back to his studio in downtown Anchorage and turns them into oil paintings. Other times he returns with his plein air painting kit to paint an interesting object on location. Plein air is a French term meaning “in the open air”, and is used to describe artwork that the artist paints outside on location.