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Shannon's Grandfather registered the Lazy"s" brand in Oregon in 1903. His other Grandfather ran for Mayor of Portland Oregon and was only narrowly defeated in 1917. |
Born in Portland, Oregon in 1931, his ambitions fixed on becoming an artist while in grade school. This interest although sometimes detoured by sports and studies continued through high school and a year at the University of Oregon. He completed his education with five years at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, winning a school scholarship and an American Institute of Graphic Design scholarship. After graduation, he served two army years as an illustrator in Germany. This allowed him the opportunity to visit European museums to see and study their paintings. Out of the Army and school in the late fifties, he found making a living painting for galleries was not a viable alternative. Illustration in the East was. In New York City he progressed from an agency sketch job through free lancing adventure pulps to slick magazines such as Argosy, Boy's Life, Show, Time and Field and Stream. He did covers for virtually all the New York paperback publishers and illustrated over thirty children's books. His advertising clients varied from pharmaceuticals, to industrials, to movies to stamps. After serving two years as President of the Society of Illustrators in New York he followed the lead of many former illustrators and entered the field of gallery painting. He and his wife Regina were married in 1958. They have three sons, Kevin, Kirk, and Eric all are into visual arts. Kirk is painting and sculpting the historical West from Colorado. The discipline and systematic research skills developed as an illustrator serve him well when combined with a love of western subjects. He is represented in the permanent collections of the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army Historical Museum, U.S. Coast Guard, Leaning Tree, Marriott, Grumbacher, Rumley, C.B.S., Burt Reynolds, California Federal Savings, University of Texas (El Paso), Univeristy of Wyoming and the Pippin Museum. He has participated in shows at the Hunterton Art Center, New York Historical Society and the Smithsonian. His biography appears in the Illustrator in American 1880-1990, "Contemporary Western Artists", "200 Years of American Illustration" and Marquis, "Who's who in America." Shannon Stirnweis Copyright © 2004 Shannon Stirnweis
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