Westlake Village Art Guild: Home

12/7/08

Roland Roy
February 3, 2009 Demo Artist

“Roland, you’re a dreamer…”

“I’ve seen lots of cops, you’re no cop. You’re a dreamer. Follow you dreams.” Police Chief, Dan Liu, of the Honolulu Police Department was giving him a reason to leave the H.P.D. As a rookie policeman, a murder case would change his life forever. His art career started there.

After retiring in 1987, Roland set out to explore his inner curiosity and hunger for the unknown through his love of painting, writing and sculpting. In this journey, he discovered the unknown was the pleasure of meeting a new friend, himself, the essence of his creativity. It was meeting with destiny.

This journey has absorbed Roland in all aspects of art, the fulfillment realized by the last and final stroke of his many mediums. Now, he measures wealth by what his inner self tells him to do.

His prose describes this openness he calls “brewing abstracts”. Roland believes that “Abstracts have been mislabeled, causing confusion and complex illusions. They are not. Abstracts should be looked at as a personal journey inward”.

Roland spends his time with his wife Toni and focuses on his real love — fine art while they await the arrival of their first grandchild. He continues to explore all facets of art from music to poetry, sculpting to stage plays. As he explains it, “I want to touch, to feel everything.” Thusly, his thumbprint is his trademark.

Background and Training

After being accepted by several prestigious art schools, Roland left his home state of Hawaii to attend Pratt Institute. But New York was not for him and he moved to California to study at Art Center College of Design where he earned a bachelors degree in fine art. He went on for a Masters at Columbia College of Cinematography.

He has won numerous awards in design and film animation and done illustration work for many major magazines. He won the New York Film Festival Award for a fifteen minute documentary on the United States Air Force, and in 1986 he designed the CBS Promotional Fall Campaign and the Star Wars Congressional Presentation for President Reagan with Bob Abel and Associates.