When painter Lane Bennion was a teen, he was involved in sports.
“My family wasn’t into art,” Bennion said during an interview with The Park Record. “So I did a bunch of sports, but I doodled on my folders in school.”
Although the Salt Lake-based painter liked doodling, he didn’t take his first drawing class until high school.
“I found I liked the feeling of creating,” he said. “When I got into college, I thought I wanted to study medicine, but my uncle, who was in medical school, showed me some of the medical textbooks and told me there were artists that drew for them.”
The anatomical drawings piqued Bennion’s interest and he took some art classes.
“I liked them and decided to go down the road to become a medical illustrator,” he said. “I went to Salt Lake Community College and the University of Utah, where I completed all the prerequisites needed to major in medical illustration.”
While Bennion would go on to graduate with a degree in Medical Illustration degree from the Medical College in Georgia, he constantly reflected on his pre-med training.
“I had a lot of good oil painting teachers at the U.,” he said. “David Dorn and Paul Davis turned my eyes toward fine art. So while I was in graduate school doing medical illustrations, I was also oil painting and developing that career on the side.”
Today, Bennion is an established medical illustrator as well as an in-demand oil painter.
The differences in the two professions are subtle, he said.
“I use the same art principles color, form, shadow and those things,” Bennion explained. “However, as an illustrator, I’ll have a client and my goal is to illustrate what they’re trying to say in the book.”
Fine art, on the other hand, is more liberating, Bennion said
“The sky’s the limit and I can do what I want to do,” he said. “Plus, fine art is just a cool thing to do.
That said, Bennion wouldn’t choose one over the other.
“It’s fun to pull off a good illustration for a doctor and see it published in a book,” he said. “At the same time I like the feeling of being in total control, and connecting with people in a more abstract way.’
Bennion’s new exhibit, “Interior Landscapes,” is his way of keeping his drive and creative juices alive.
“I’ve been painting interiors and store fronts the last two or three years,” he said. “But then I’m always trying out new subjects that interest me that are around me. I got into a groove with store fronts and store displays because people connected with them.”
Bennion’s references are culled from the malls and stores in Las Vegas, Nev.
“I chose Vegas because when I would take my camera to stores in Salt Lake, I would get kicked out for taking photos of the displays,” he said. “In Las Vegas, everyone is a tourist, so you can shoot whatever you want.”
“There are other things that catch my eye in Vegas, such as the hotel lobbies and rooms,” he said.
After spending a few days taking photos in Sin City with his wife, Bennion will sift through the images and find what interests him.
“I take snapshots, not worrying if they will become a work of art,” he said. “I decide on that later.”
One of Bennion’s composition trademarks is “busy-ness.”
“A lot of the things I paint have some kind of chaos to it,” he said. “I try not to stay too beholden to the photo. I like to edit things out and focus on the ceiling, or the piles of things stacked on shelves.
“Even when I was painting toys as stilllife before I started painting stores, (the compositions) would basically be a mass of toys piled together.
“I guess I’m just attracted to that sort of thing.”
Lane Bennion’s “Interior Landscapes” will be exhibited at the Terzian Galleries, 309 Main Street. An opening reception will be held at the gallery Friday, Feb. 25, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.