Draft:Lee U. Bennion

Lee Udall Bennion (1956-) is an American painter, known for her landscapes of the American West, and elongated portraits that gaze directly at the viewer.

Bennion was born in Merced, California into a family descended from Mormon pioneers (all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). In 1974 at age 18, she began studying art at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah on a full scholarship. Two years later, she met and married ceramicist Joseph Bennion and the couple eventually opened Horseshoe Mountain Pottery studio in the artist community of Spring City, Utah (population ~500 at the time). There she had two daughters (Louisa and Zina) before returning with her husband to complete their MFAs from 1983-86. They had a third daughter (Adah) in 1988, who frequently models in Bennion's paintings. She has won numerous awards, and served on the Board of Directors of the Utah Arts Council.

Bennion's art is representational, but both shape and color are distorted and emotionally charged. In an interview for the Springville Museum of Art, she said, "My landscape and still life paintings tell more how I feel about a place or a set of objects that what they actually look like". In addition to their work as artists, Lee and her husband own a river rafting company, and a natural skin-care company called Mom's Stuff. An avid horseback rider and hiker, one of Bennion's best known landscapes of the Grand Canyon was inspired by a 1994 rafting trip where she was life-flighted from the river suffering from what was thought to be appendicitis but was actually a kidney stone; rather than return home, she walked 20 miles post-op down the canyon, descended a 200-foot cliff to the river, and arrived just 15 minutes before the rafts. The inclusion of such personal history makes her "canvases...often autobiographical... with a spiritual countenance[,] sincerity and naturalness far outstripping more sophisticated approaches."