29 Oct In the Studio: The Beautiful Grind

Ben Steele came to Helper, Utah, in 2002, lured by the opportunity to apprentice under retired professor and artist David Dornan. He arrived in the former mining and railroad town equipped with a BFA in painting and drawing from the University of Utah and accompanied by his college sweetheart, Melanie. In Helper, he and Melanie, now married, found the ideal conditions to launch Ben’s art career and their life together: a bustling art community, mentors-turned-adopted family, and all-important affordability.

Prismatic Pepper Sauce | Oil on Canvas | 48 x 36 inches

“Helper was a place where we could build something together and build our community together,” Steele says. Two decades later, the couple is still building. They have three children, they’ve opened a new 10,000-square-foot art studio, and a retail store resides in Steele’s original Main Street studio. Now, they’re paying forward the generosity and inspiration they found in Helper to the next generation of artists and creative spirits.

Sketching a page layout for Vincent van Ghost.

A rustic, hand-planed, reclaimed wood ceiling and a European-style fireplace create a warm, inviting space for the whole family. Photos courtesy of Steele Fine Art

Over a five-year period, Steele gut-renovated his new studio — an old soda bottling factory the couple bought on the edge of downtown in 2017. Designed with must-haves born from years of art-making in a narrow 13-foot-wide studio, the new space includes rooms for “cooking” paintings and for spray applications. But there’s also room for expansion of the artistic kind. “Going forward,” says Steele, “I’d like to do more in bigger, heroic sizes,” something he notes the old studio couldn’t support.

Steele works on Gem Art: Shoshone Falls at his easel, with his wife’s workspace in full view; she’s his most trusted creative collaborator.

For his solo show at the St. George Art Museum (through December 2026), Steele created two immense works. In the 7.5-by-9-foot painting Sunday Afternoon at Temple Square, he plays with Seurat’s iconic pointillist masterpiece for a take on Mormonism. And in Natural Numbers, an 8-by-12-foot rendering of Utah’s Delicate Arch, Steele used acrylic and spray paint — new materials to him — in paint-by-numbers style.

Three 8-by-4-foot panels for Natural Numbers — a scale made possible by the new studio — are sealed, drying, and ready to go to the St. George Art Museum for final assembly for his solo exhibition, 45th State of Mind.

The couple is also working on a children’s book titled Vincent van Ghost, and spreads from the book are part of the solo show. Ten years in the making, the book project consists of 25 painted canvases. “It’s both a fun technical, structural challenge and another form of doing something large,” Steele says, adding, “I love having multiple canvases to tell a story.”

Below, Steele puts his spray room to use, creating a dot matrix application from a stencil to realize a pop-art background for Roy’s Western Spray Paint.

The prolific hyperrealist painter brings a sense of humor to his work. His painting, Developing Dots, a Dots candy box painted in pointillist style, is a perfect, punny example. “I enjoy making a few jokes and serving up a little bit of art history at the same time.” And yes, he genuinely has fun in the studio. “It’s addicting,” he says, readily admitting his workaholic bent. Being an artist can be a solitary thing, but the new studio is designed to feed Steele’s work and his family life in equal measure. There’s a workspace for his wife, an artist and writer herself, and hangout space for their boys.

Natural Numbers | Acrylic and Spray Paint | 8 x 12 feet

“Melanie can see my workspace from her desk and can offer impromptu critiques,” Steele says. “There’s room for the kids. My studio is like the family room, which allows me to stay connected.” His open-door, all-are-welcome atmosphere feeds his philosophy of always learning and staying flexible. “I generally stay open and try to pay attention to life, to what the universe is serving up. Even our kids feed our art ideas.” Steele is effusive about the heart of their whole operation. “Melanie is essential to this. Having her to think through the ideas, but also her buy-in. I’m so glad that we met in college, and we’ve been together for the whole journey. [The business] is not mine, it’s ours.” In addition to monumental paintings, Steele has been leaning into Western lore. “I’m a child of the West,” he says. “I’ve sampled a good chunk of the West and getting to reference it has been fun.”

Steele uses a wide range of hues in his work. His well-loved palette of vibrant colors anchors a bench with various media and supplies. Photos courtesy of Steele Fine Art

Everyday objects are the heroes of Steele’s work. He sources items from vintage stores and online, admitting to spending “more money on eBay than is rational.” An open crayon box, a recurring motif for Steele, is staged at the bottom left; a drawing by son Elliot, five, is on the right. Photo courtesy of Steele Fine Art

Team Steele has also found delight in Beg, Borrow, and Steele, a storefront located in Ben’s old Main Street studio that has let them engage with a retail clientele distinct from their bread-and-butter collectors and gallery partners. As much as Steele values craft and artists being good at what they do, Beg, Borrow, and Steele allows him to dispense with the sense of elitism that can infiltrate artistic settings. “I like that a painting gets distilled into a sticker that sells for a buck,” he says of the work he creates for local businesses to evoke humor and instill pride in Helper’s artistic identity. His mural of Hamburger Helper on his studio facade is another example. “The world is always trying to close in on you, especially as you get older, so we try as much as we can to keep it open and keep ourselves engaged and not burn out,” he says, adding, “and still be grateful that the galleries want my paintings!”

Sketchy Territory | Oil on Panel with Mixed Media | 24 x 29 x 4 inches

Old Faithful Salt | Oil on Panel | 40 x 44 inches

Steele captivates through his enthusiasm for Helper and for his chosen career. But perhaps it is more apt to say that art chose him. “As I get older, it feels like a beautiful grind to me,” he says. “It’s a real pleasure.”

Steele is represented by Altamira Fine Art (Jackson, WY; Scottsdale, AZ), Modern West Fine Art (Salt Lake City, UT), Courtney Collins Fine Art (Big Sky, MT), and others.