He first studied art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He became interested in landscape when his family moved to Arizona .to care for his grandmother. His art studies continued when he returned to Cleveland and attended the Cleveland Institute of Art. At that time, the Abstraction movement was underway, a style that Ahrendt found unappealing. He left the United States for eleven years to tour Europe, living primarily in Germany, where he attended the Munich Academy of Creative Arts. There he studied the painting techniques of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, techniques that he applies to his own work.