Dan Boylan
Daniel Boylan (b. 1940)
The decisions I make during the process of painting are mainly instinctive and have evolved over a period of years. I have pursued painting practically all of my life. When I was young I had other explanations for painting, mostly borrowed from other artists. I still think it’s a hard thing to define, it defies any kind of real logic, especially when you compare painting to other professions. It remains an unanswered question for me, except that now at 60 years of age my work has become my identity. It represents who I am. These images that I paint are a fragment of the visions I started out with as a boy. Still, they are a chronology of those original visions, influenced over time and altered by N.C.Wyeth, Maxfield Parish, Norman Rockwell, Larry Rivers, Jackson Pollock, Willem DeKooning, Franz Kline, Richard Diebenkorn, Nathan Olivera, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Odd Nerdrum, Van Gogh, most of the impressionists and post impressionists, Goya, Velasquez, Titian, Michaelangelo, Turner, the poetry of Blake and Milton, Roman Catholicism, the Irish poets and writers, my father and uncle, 20 years in San Francisco, a year in South America, 60’s music, alcohol and Billy Holiday. – Daniel Boylan ——– Dan Boylan was born and educated in Omaha and completed an independent study program at Creighton University in 1959. He went on to earn a bachelor’s of art degree in 1961 from the University of Nebraska in Omaha. In the same year, Boylan participated in a summer painting seminar at the Chicago Art Institute. After serving two years in the Coast Guard, he moved to San Francisco to work and study with the Bay Area Figurative artists. After a time at the San Francisco Art Institute, 1978-79, he returned to Omaha, whence he delved into full-time work as a studio artist, mainly painting figurative abstractions. His art has evolved over the years, and now includes paintings of landscapes and city scenes. Boylan has painted several murals, including those at the University of Nebraska Medical Center; Bishop Clarkson Memorial Hospital, Omaha; Firmatures Restaurant, Omaha; and Theatre of the Arts, Santa Fe, Argentina. Corporate collections include United Airlines, Miami; Federal Reserve Bank, Kansas City, Mo.; ConAgra Corporation, Omaha; First National Bank, Omaha; Central States Insurance Corp., Omaha; Omaha Airport Authority, Omaha; and IBM Corporation, Kansas City, Mo.