Sale on canvas prints! Use code ABCXYZ at checkout for a special discount!

Ben Bensen III Art Collections

Shop for artwork from Ben Bensen III based on themed collections. Each image may be purchased as a canvas print, framed print, metal print, and more! Every purchase comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Artwork by Ben Bensen III

Each image may be purchased as a canvas print, framed print, metal print, and more! Every purchase comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

About Ben Bensen III

Ben Bensen III I recall my first professional assignment as an artist. While I was in my senior year at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette, I painted a pocket watch for a billboard design to advertise Hub City Bank. I made one hundred eighty dollars. I've been making a living as an artist ever since.

I was born in New Orleans the eldest son of six siblings. I came out the chute with a baseball glove in my hand though I was not as good as my father, who could have had a career if not for the war. I lived between two airfields, one civil and one military. It was a big influence on me. I learned to paint trying to make my model airplanes to look like they did on the boxtops. I went to high school on an athletic scholarship and met my wife to be there. As most kids of the sixties, I was in love with rock 'n roll and played guitar in a garage band for about 4 years. It was and still is my first love and still jam in front of the mirror... when nobody's home. I married my high school sweetheart in 1972 but didn't really want to until I made my first million. Luckily for the both of us, our need to satisfy the carnal preceded the financial otherwise we'd still be waiting in a cajun swamp like the story of Evangeline.

Graduating from USL, I left Louisiana to attend the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, to further study illustration and painting. Therese and I left home in 1974, to attend that school where I met one of heroes, Jack Leynnwood, who made a name for himself painting model boxtops for Revell, Aurora and other model companies. He was a big influence on me and I took every class he taught. After almost starving for a year after graduating, Jack got me hooked up with an aerospace company for my first job out of Art Center. I worked at General Dynamics/Pomona Division for three years which helped me pay off my student loans and afford us our first new car.

When we got pregnant, I freaked out and left that job to concentrate on my freelance career as a storyboard illustrator, art director and designer. My quitting a secure job while she was pregnant didn't make our marriage so much fun. She was scared and unprepared and I was pissed that I'd have to play surrogate mommy again. I was the eldest son in our family of six and learned how to change diapers, make formula, burp a baby, and all that other motherly stuff early in life. Props to us, though, I was a good teacher and she was the better student.

I am a member of the Society of Illustrators/Los Angeles and for many years a board member, and was part of a ten member team to institute a chapter of the Graphic Artist Guild in Los Angeles. The Guild is a union of graphic artists, photographers, painters and designers that was formed in New York in the late 1960's to promote ethical and financial guidelines to the industry and to provide legal and health benefits to all its members. Today, it is but a shell of what it was designed to be... so much for herding artists into one frame of mind for the better good.

Through my association with the Guild and SILA, I have given many promotional seminars on ad design, and have shared my unique marker technique at major California universities and trade shows. I also taught ad concepts and advanced marker design at the Art Center College of Design for four years.

With the advent of computers and Internet communication, I widened my clientele beyond the major advertising agencies in Los Angeles and the west coast to include those in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis and Detroit. In 1999, I was asked to help design the promos for the first Spiderman movie. Many concepts and two years later, the movie trailer and the movie itself were victims of the 9/11 attacks because of the extensive use of the Trade Towers in New York in the script. The Spiderman script had to be rewritten and because, by then, I had relocated to the bayou, I was not asked to be a part of the new promo.

In 2002, as a member of the Air Force Artist Association and the chairperson for all of Southern California for that program, I was invited to represent the west coast contingent of a five member team to spend two weeks in Germany and Turkey to document through sketches, photos and paintings the United States Air Force's involvement protecting the "no fly zone" in Iraq during Operation Northern Watch. As I mentioned earlier, I enjoy painting aircraft and today have many paintings in the Air Force collection with three currently up on the walls of the Pentagon.

Anyway, in 2001, we decided to cash out of LA and move back to Louisiana. We now live in a small town north of New Orleans on a 5 acre ranch still serving the ad community not only in California, but nationwide. In 2005, my mom lost her home and all of her possessions in the floods of Katrina and we had to replace our roof and remove about sixty tall pines. These are all stories for another time. Last year, after forty three years of frustrations, we New Orleanians finally played in and won the Super Bowl. Who Dat? We'Dat!

Today, I am still doing my advertising art thing and painting though I haven't gotten enough art to take to the galleries here in New Orleans area.

For more information on Ben Bensen and his art, please visit: http://graphicgumbo.com/