Los Angeles LDS Temple Painting

Los Angeles LDS Temple Painting
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Friday, December 15, 2017

Kendall Davenport ~ Paints the spirit in detail ~ his story

Introduction, painting "the spirit of life":
             Kendall Davenport is an extremely sensitive artist who has found a way to paint powerful paintings in exquisite detail yet they come from his imagination and his heart. His paintings are not ordinary paintings.  He has gone beyond traditional art forms and created a new art form which allows him to paint astounding paintings with feelings of hope and renewal along with the delightful feeling of being in real nature and experience "the spirit of life" the earth has.

Kendall's story:
            Kendall was born and raised near the entrance of Yellowstone Park and the Grand Tetons in eastern Idaho where he still enjoys hiking, motor cycling, canoeing, and fishing on all the back trails.  Born into a family of poets, writers, and musicians, his French-English heritage gives him passion, sensitivity, and a flair for perfectionism.     
            When Kendall was growing up his family had an electronics repair business.  He was told that survival depended on his being part of it.  Because of Kendall’s devotion to his family he studied electronics in college and used his education to become a skilled electronic technician so he could repair TVs.  After years of working for the business, TV repair declined dramatically and the way the business was being operated made it very oppressive for him. The pressure became so extreme and he finally had to leave the business which led him to feel hopelessness and real depression.
            As he sought for relief he found that being in nature seemed to help. He was able to feel part of nature. He saw how nature was always changing, becoming, and renewing. From nature he saw that there was the process of changing and good things could happen with effort and faith. He could feel the spirit of the Lord in nature. It gave him hope. It took Kendall a great deal of courage and strength to spend a year finding out who he was and what he could contribute of value to others.
            Several years before Kendall left the electronics business, he had feelings that “electronics” wasn’t him. During that time he returned to college to study fine art.  He took classes and also continued to work full time to support his own growing family. (By that time he and his wife Yolanda had seven children.)  He loved the language of art and it felt part of who he was.  He diligently applied and mastered what he learned. After four years of art school he was honored with the Presidential Award for Best Artist.

New art form:
            He decided to find a way to use his fine art training to create a new career as an artist. He had in his mind and heart a desire to paint his feelings of nature in its wonderful real detail. He tried traditional mediums but couldn’t create all that he wanted to express. He felt that possibly there could be a way with a new painting medium, which would involve the use of Adobe Photoshop. He spent three years of intense struggle to find a way to get beyond the textbook techniques of Adobe Photoshop to create and develop his own fine art painting tools that are far beyond Photoshop’s original purpose. With these tools it became possible for him to paint beautiful paintings with incredible detail. He used the fine art principles of the masters with the technology of today. 
            In describing his painting work he says, “I am in a computer at a canvas, that canvas is as real as any out here. The tools are real but they are beyond oil, watercolor, and acrylic. My palette is parts of this program. I can paint with all the elements and principles of fine art, but in detail.” 
            It took considerable effort to find a way to get these paintings produced in a tangible form.  After much research he found out about the Iris Giclée printer that had a wide enough color gamut to produce all the colors he had painted. Bringing the paintings to life was not as simple as clicking "print". It took him extensive proofing for days.  It finally worked! Kendall said, “When I saw the painting the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I shouted, “I did it! I did it!”
            Kendall experienced a great healing process as he painted his first five paintings and gratefully named them "The New Hope Series". He discovered that he had an intense desire to share the healing feelings of hope and renewal he had found in nature with others. His new art form has made it possible for him to carefully paint those healing feelings of nature. 
             Kendall said, “I want people to feel that they’re standing right at a place, and then I want them to feel the peace, the healing, the renewal, the assurance, and the hope that nature has in it.”
 
Five Disciplines:
           It took five major disciplines that Kendall acquired to make his paintings possible. It is rare for one person to master all of these. He has the creative ability to:
 1)  Share stories and poetry with emotions: He was sought after in high school for his writing skills for the high school newspaper. He studied and became skilled at writing about real emotions in a poetic manner and has a flare for story telling with a delightful touch of humor. He has learned the art of expressing those emotions, stories, and humor in his artwork.
2)  Fine art skills: 4 years of college level art school and receiving the President’s Award for Best Artist.
 3)  Professional photography:  As a young boy he was fascinated with photography and started his life-long study of it when he was nine, which eventually led him to be a skilled professional photographer. He paints with photo references which need to be very well done.
4)  Use of an extensive background in computer technology, hardware, and software, to create a brand new virtual painting environment.
5)  Professional printing skills:  To get his paintings in a tangible form required extensive study of printing methods, calibration, and the skill to run a large format printer.  He affectionately calls his printer his paint brush because that is how his paintings are painted on the canvas.

Professional work:
            Kendall is a professional artist and his paintings have sold widely from his own studio gallery and other galleries including galleries in Jackson Wyoming. He enjoys relating how he personally met and sold a painting to Tom Clancy, the author.  He has painted over one hundred paintings, each one taking from six months to a year to paint.  One painting took as long as four years to complete.        Kendall and Yolanda have a fine art business, "Kendall Davenport Fine Art",  which they have been running for twenty years.
            An art professor from Pennsylvania upon seeing Kendall’s paintings in a Jackson Wyoming gallery came to Kendall’s studio to learn more about the new way he paints. After seeing how Kendall paints, he excitedly exclaimed, “This is the art of the future, real nature on canvas!”
            Kendall is the creator and pioneer of this new fine art medium, which he named “Giclée Painting on Canvas”.  His new way of painting allows him to paint his emotions, stories, and poetry in a powerful manner. Imagine an entirely new way to paint that makes feelings and imagination paintable in detail. Imagine the familiar feelings of nature around you as you wander through one of his paintings and experience hope and renewal. His powerful paintings can bring you to a new realm, an exciting new place to be. 

Painting LDS Temples:
            Kendall’s new art form is perfect for him to paint  "the spirit of eternal life"  and the feelings of the temple.   It allows him to express the ultimate hope the temples represent that comes from Christ. With each intricate part and element of his painting process he paints in that hope, along with the reality of Christ, His doctrines, and perfect love that can bring you hope, peace and joy. One sister stated, “When I see pictures of the temple I can feel the temple, when I see Kendall’s temple paintings I can feel what is inside the temple.” She could feel how Kendall paints into each of his temple paintings the warm welcoming love of a kind Heavenly Father and Savior with their divine purposes that is so powerfully present in the temples. 

Friday, December 8, 2017


Seattle Washington LDS Temple

picture image painting

Painting name: "Light of Christ"

Visit Seattle Temple Painting website


Seattle Temple
This painting has the feel of daytime, flowers, and sunshine, with the welcoming of warm lights in the doorway and brilliant light behind the stained glass windows. The people in Washington love the stained glass windows. Even though you can't see the stained glass windows in the daytime unless there is intense radiant light from within the temple, I painted it as if there were.
The light of Christ illuminates our agency.
"Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying,
I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness,
but shall have the light of life" John 8:12