Artist Profile: Royal Scanlon
Royal Scanlon
5748 Kenwood
KC, MO 64110
Bio:
Experiences That Influenced My Calling Early Childhood and Adolescence 1956-1961 My mother was a Kansas City Art Institute trained, talented artist in her own right and nurtured my desire to draw and sketch pictures of the living world around me while still in grade school. Mrs Wooley My 3rd Grade teacher taught this left handed child how to hold a pencil/pen/brush in a way that allowed me to write, draw and paint without smearing my work. 1962-1964 At Bingham Junior High School (KCMO) my art teacher Mrs. Lambert helped nurture my pencil drawing skills and expand my awareness of types of painting and painting techniques. Formal Art Education Kansas City Technical Vocational School 1967-1968 I was so committed to art by the time I was in high school that my talent allowed me to get into a special arts education program here in KC. So for my Junior and Senior years I split my time between two schools attending half days at Southwest High School and half days at Kansas City Technical Vocational where I studied under Earl Boucher and received a degree in Commercial Art. (1968) A Slight Detour 1969-1984 In 1964 I went to my first rock concert, I saw the Beatles here in Kansas City at the old Athletics stadium. That experience literally changed my life. I took up playing guitar, song writing and singing in rather short order. It was then and there that my interest in the creative arts encountered a very real point of cleavage that has influenced my work ever since. Though I still kept my hand in at creating in the form of visual arts I was primarily writing and creating art aurally through music. The Road 1969-1984 After high school I attended a year of college but the call of the road was too strong to deny. So I took to the road and a life of making music and that journey would consume a decade and a half of my life before settling back into a home life here in Kansas City. Home Again in Kansas City 1984-1990 I continued to make my primary living as a musician. T’ai Chi Ch’uan 1987 In 1987 I began studying t’ai chi ch’uan and have been a daily practitioner ever since. Recording Studio 1990-2010 I owned and operated a Mastering Facility, Recording Studio and Duplication Business. Composite Imaging 2010-Present Day When I retired from the Recording Studio Business I finally returned to my visual arts roots and that is what I’ve been immersed in ever since. It started with an avocation of mine for many years, i.e., photography. But after I cleared the decks of other distractions, I began experimenting with ideas and techniques that I’d never engaged in before. Quite sincerely, all of this was for myself – simply for the joy of immersing myself in the creative process full time once again. It wasn’t until I shared some of my work with another artist friend that I ever even considered bringing it out of the digital domain and into 3 dimensional reality (as 2D images); and that only happened because my friend, Jane Booth, prodded me into it. Since then, (June of 2015) I have shown my work at: Mildred’s Coffee Shop, Missouri Bank, Centric Projects, Eclektica, Burns & McDonnell, Kansas City Artist Coalition, Brookside Gallery & Frame, Deloitte and Gilmore and Bell. Skills Besides the Composite-Imaging work that happily consumes a great deal of my time these days, as noted, my creative talents span decades in other artistic endeavors as well -- from making my living as a singer songwriter, guitarist to writing poetry and now, teaching Yang Style Short Form T’ai Chi Ch’uan, an art form that has been a daily part of my life for the last 30 years.
