Arnold Shives is an internationally recognized Canadian painter and master print maker and is also a mountaineer of much renown.
Arnold Edward Shives was born December 27, 1943 in Vancouver, BC. As a child he recalls always loving to draw and has a vivid memory of encouragement from a classmate to whom he sold a drawing to at age 9. This early entrepreneurial success led him to sell his work door-to-door in his west-side neighbourhood, further motivating the budding young artist.
Shives continued to develop his love of art during his high school years at Lord Byng Secondary in Vancouver and later at UBC where, in his freshman year, he audited painting classes with the ever-inspiring Gordon Smith. In 1964, following two years at university, he moved to California to complete a BFA degree at the San Francisco Art Institute. There he was profoundly influenced by teacher Richard Diebenkorn and went on to graduate with an MA in Painting from Stanford University.
In 1968 he returned to Vancouver and met Toni Onley who became a lifelong mentor and supporter of his work. Toni encouraged Arnold to pursue his imagery with professional galleries and met early success in both Vancouver and Toronto. Since that time he has worked as a full-time artist exploring the serene nature of the landscape in painting, assemblage and through print making.
Shives’ experiences as a mountain climber have provided a rich repertoire of imagery for his work over the years. He has made a number of first ascents of peaks from the north Cascades to the glaciered peaks of northern BC, and has climbed with some of the province’s top mountaineers. He is mentioned in Bruce Fairley’s “Canadian Mountaineering Anthology” and in Phil Dowling’s “Famous Climbers in Canada”.
Exhibited across Canada, the United States, South Africa, Europe and Japan, Shives’ work can be found in numerous public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the San Francisco Art Museum and the Artists for Kids Gallery in North Vancouver.
He has received a number of honours including Canada Council grants over the years, and was appointed a member of the Royal Canadian Academy (RCA) in 2006. Arnold Shives lives and works at his home studio in North Vancouver.