Early Life and Educaton

Charles Eugene Shannon was born on June 22, 1914 in Montgomery, Alabama, the son of Claudius (Claude) Eugene Shannon (Montgomery, Alabama) and Charlotte Euphemia (Effie) Bonnar Shannon (Ashtabula, Ohio). Charles had one sibling, John Bonnar Shannon, who was four years older. In the spring of 1918, Charles Shannon (age 3) made his first drawing after receiving a watercolor set from his mother. 

He spent his 4th birthday in Redbrook, Ohio on Lake Erie where he and his brother and mother spent annual summer vacations with his mother’s family throughout his childhood. During this visit his parents separated and Shannon and his mother did not return to Montgomery. Due to financial circumstances, Shannon was sent to live with his mother’s oldest sister and her husband in Ashtabula, Ohio where he attended the first three years of grammar school.  In 1923 , when Shannon was age 9,  his parents reconciled and the family was reunited.

At the age of 15, Shannon graduated from Technical High School, an honors school in Atlanta, Georgia . Having been elected leader of Tech High's  senior commercial art class, and  selected art editor of its yearbook, he had his sights set on attending the Cleveland School of Art (Cleveland Institute of Art). The idea was not well received by his parents who insisted he attend Emory University. After two years at Emory, Shannon, at the age of 18 was able to apply to the Cleveland School of Art without his parent’s permission. He refused to complete his junior year at Emory which angered his parents who withdrew all financial support. In September 1932, Shannon was admitted to the freshman class at the Cleveland School of Art. 

To afford his tution at art school, Charles Shannon worked kneading the clay for the sculpture classes and as a janitor cleaning classrooms.  He waited tables at a local restaurant for his meals and the occasional tip.  

Shannon cited a very significant event which happened outside of class during his freshman year.  A fellow student gave him a used copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.   Shannon became interested in the transcendentalist philosophy of writiers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  These readings, which he pursued on his own, formed the basis of his maturation as an artist, as well as, a lifelong commitment to the fundamental dignity of the individual in a free and just society.

At the end of his freshman year, Shannon applied for and was accepted to a three month summer apprenticeship with Swanson Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, a commercial art studio that handled the Coca-Cola, Hollingsworth Candy and Woco Pep Gasoline accounts, among others. 

On the recommendation of A. T. Swanson and his teachers, Shannon was awarded scholarships for  his last three years.  He continued to do janitoral work at the school and worked at the restaurant for his keep.   Towards the end of his sophomore year Shannon had initially intended to declare commercial art as his specialty but after being exposed to fine art he chose portraiture.    Upon completing his sophomore year, Shannon again worked as a summer apprentice at Swanson Studios, Atlanta.  

Following his junior year of art school,  in the summer of 1935, Shannon spent several weeks in Montclair, New Jersey painting his first portrait commission. With money he earned from that, he spent the rest of the summer building a log cabin studio on land donated to him by his uncle in Butler County, Alabama, near the isolated community of Searcy,. In later interviews Shannon recounts that he worked with two young African-American men to build the cabin and in the process came to appreciate the day-to-day activities and lives of the African-American community in that area. Shannon’s friendship with these two young men provided him the opportunity to experience rural black culture firsthand. “I went to their churches with them, to their dances and drank with them. I came to love this land-the plants and the people that grew from it.” 

Full of sights and sounds of the summer, especially spirituals and blues, Shannon "was eager to get something down".  With reluctance, he returned to the Cleveland School of Art for his senior year. In three oil paintings he completed outside of class, a personal style evolved marked by elongation of the figures, rhythmical forms and somber colors.  In May 1935, he exhibited one of the paintings The Red Flower, which received the first award for Figure Composition in the 18th Annual May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio. 

Upon graduation, the Cleveland School of Art awarded Shannon a Agnes Gund Memorial Traveling Scholarship.  This enabled him to spend two months in Mexico, where he was particularly interested in the murals of Jose Orosco and the paintings of Rufino Tamayo .  While in Mexico City, Shannon spent a day with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.