John Shave

I was born in England but moved to Australia with my parents when I was 11. I started painting at 38 by joining an adult education class. This altered my life completely and within a couple of years painting had taken over my life. I was tutored privately by Leonid Vasin and we became good friends, travelling to England to paint together and we still paint together when I occasionally return to Australia.

I have always painted en plein air, but sometimes use the studio. My influences have been Arthur Streeton and the Australian impressionists, Sargent, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, Seago and many others including, of course, Leonid Vasin.

I paint in oils mainly and have been tutoring oil painting classes for many years. I also paint with pastels and watercolours and use most drawing mediums.

I am a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts of South Australia, have been showing at the Mall Gallery exhibitions for many years with the Royal Society of Marine Artists, the ROI and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. I have won several awards with the Victor Harbour Rotary exhibition in Australia and the Talens and Pro Arte awards at the Patchings exhibition.

I am interested in mood and atmosphere and in capturing a sense of place or time of day, with the feeling of light being all important.
I am still as keen now about painting as I have always been and I see my artistic life in the future progressing a little more into a feeling of abstract and colour but staying with a realistic flavour.

I love of all things boaty including lovely wet mud full of colour and life and all the boaty junk to be found at the water’s edge. This leads of course to my love of seascapes but I am also passionate about landscape and portrait painting and all that that encompasses.
Painting is my life.