By Megan Willome
It’s a tossup which blues Ben B. Beckendorf is better known for, his music or his art. He’s written over 1,000 blues songs, and his colorful art — which does contain the color blue — is about real life: breakfast foods, Texas cactus, blooms in a Mason jar, grapes on a vine, a vintage airplane from the Hangar Hotel.
Beckendorf was not born in Fredericksburg, but his family moved to land not far from town in 1965. He’s lived here long enough to see Main Street change from a sleepy street to a tourist destination.
His father, Charles Beckendorf, was a noted artist who used to have a gallery in town (it’s since been moved online). Just by growing up, Beckendorf learned from a master.
“I grew up around him doing stuff and was just amazed at what he could do. It was fascinating, the projects he’d work on,” Beckendorf said. “The things my father could do with a piece of paper and a pencil totally fascinated me.”
Beckendorf, who plays more than 250 gigs a year, also learned music from his father.
“I’ve been playing guitar since about 8 or 9 years old,” he said. “My father was a wonderful singer, too. He introduced me to the crooners, Frank Sinatra, and I love that stuff.”
Beckendorf has a series of paintings of blues artists as well as bluesy musical instruments, including guitars and saxophones.
For Beckendorf, art and music are inseparable.
“I’ve been doing it all my life, both of them,” he said. “Seems like whenever I’m not doing music, I’m doing art. It fills my void when I have a void. Both of them are expressions of me.”
He’s not always sure why people like what they do in a particular piece of art.
“It’s something that just sparks something,” he said. “I view art totally neutral.”
He does know many people are drawn to things from their childhood, and he paints a lot of vintage items, especially cars and motorcycles. Another commonality is old things: old fans, old phones, old cars, old toasters, old coffee percolators.
Also old Fredericksburg, including Luckenbach.
“I love doing the little places around here,” he said. “It’s interesting architecture.”
Beckendorf’s art has been at URBANHerbal for about six months, and his family has known the owner, Bill Varney, for several years.
“He’s got it down to an art,” Beckendorf said of Varney’s gallery, adding that he likes “the home-ness” of it.
In November, Beckendorf did a two-night concert and art show at the gallery, complete with hors d’oeuvres, sangria and beer.
All his art is full of color, including blue.
“I like to bring color into anything. Even the small pieces are full of color. They put a little color on your wall,” he said. “Every artist has a different feel, and sometimes I’ll start with a general idea, but I’ll finish it totally different because I feel totally different.”
Beckendorf primarily works in acrylics, but he also uses watercolor and colored pencil.
“I’ll put watercolor down first then do all the detailing with colored pencil to sharpen it up,” he said, a technique he learned from his father.
When Beckendorf goes in the art studio, “it draws me in there, and once I start, then I can’t leave for a while. That’s the way it happens with me, and my father used to do that, too — work on a painting till 3 in the morning. It gets you hooked into it, and you can’t leave until it’s done.”