About Ben Vanderwerff — Artist, Designer, and Creative Professional

Graphic designer

Web designer

Traditional/digital artist/illustrator

Marketer

Google ads/Seo

Industrial designer

Woodworker/finisher

Teacher

From the age of 3 drawing in my notebook while my mother would read to me, to currently working as a large scale pleinair artist/webdesigner/graphic designer/marketer and more, I’ve lived my life in creative pursuits. I’m excited to be back in the Skagit Valley, a community seeped in creativity and surrounded by unrelenting nature. This community serves both as a creative outlet and cultural breading ground.

Combining fine art, web design, marketing, and hands-on craftsmanship to help businesses and art collectors achieve their vision

Looking Forwards

The last couple months have been a whirlwind of change, new skills new career outlet and new way to live life around work and play. Being able to work remoatly as a visual artist has been a big goal, while also not needing to rely on my visual art for income. I will soon be transitioning to living out of my vehicle part/full time on blm land across the PNW. I’ve continued leanening new skills in graphic design, marketing, website design recently google ads. While I’m already employed I’ll be looking to offer services to new clients and formally starting a business. This freedom of work will allow me to live remoatly in the environments I want to visual paint for the galleries I work with. This lifestyle also supports minimalism and not needing to pay rent, freeing up lots of time and income ability. Being able to seperate my professional design and website work from my fine arts career is refreshing and at the same time they compliment each other. I’m also very exited with the idea that I own them space I get to live in, no longer renting my space can’t be taken away by a landlord. Washington is an Incredibly expensive place to live and I’m excited that this way of living allows me to focus on my work and quality of life and not worry about rent.

Overlanding

Often a new word to people, overlanding is off-road and rv/camping culture combined. BLM land or “Buero of land management” is free govemernt controlled land that allows people to camp for up to 2 weeks in a month. These two cultures combined means I’ll be living somewhat out of my van, as I bounce between locations of which there are hundreds.

I’ve had the pleasure of off-roading in jeeps, trucks, quads and Subaru in Washington and Mexico. I absolutely love overlanding/off-road culture on its own, but combined with my love of pleinair painting it’s a match made in heaven. I get to explore untouched nature and find hidden beautify that not only do I get to create, but I get to live in and around it.

I recently purchased a van to dive deeper into this lifestyle and this August my girlfriend and I will be attempting this lifestyle full time ish. We’ve already had the benifit of doing a 2 week continual trip out of my Subaru Outback, but his mini van will be a substantial upgrade. I’m excited as I gain more money that I can delve further into this lifestyle of which is pretty deep. Car camping , mini vans full sized vans and high top vans, trucks with canopies, trucks and trailers, rooftop tents, earth roamers and so much more. Especially living in the PNW, we are blessed with seemingly endless mountains to explore with thousands of miles of trails and hundreds of thousands of things to see and experience.