Jan Scott Boyer was born in Indiana in 1941. He attended area Catholic schools but suffered from a learning disability and never attended high school. He began painting as a teenager and did both landscapes and abstracts. He traveled and sold his canvases all over the Midwest but was overcome by stress and placed on disability.
His career has been a study of contrasts. He has been a three time prize winner at the Hoosier Salon. In 1989, he created "Allism," an abstract motif that depicted horrendous scenes of torture. He has been placed under scrutiny because of a letter writing campaign to area art professionals but he has also been featured in local and national outsider art shows.
The content of his work continues to evolve, as does his process. An overview of his paintings of the last fifteen years or so will show the deliberate changes he has made. The transition is never sudden but the viewer can see old merging with new forms until he has adapted to his latest subject matter and painting techniques. He will spend weeks completing details on his canvases, some containing hundreds of figures, buildings, or objects from his very creative imagination.