Arnold Shives, 1943 - 

Arnold Shives was born in 1943 in Vancouver, British Columbia. As an active member of the British Columbia Mountaineering Club, Shives has explored and drawn inspiration from the mountains around Vancouver and the rest of BC, and made some of the first ascents in the north Cascades. This affinity with nature has become the source for Shives' painting and printmaking. 

In 1962, Shives studied with painter Gordon Smith at the University of British Columbia, two years later he enrolled at the San Francisco Art Insitute where he continued his studies under Julius Richard Diebenkorn. In 1966 he won a Carnegie Corporation of New York Fellowship and entered the Graduate Program in Painting and Sculpture at Stanford University. 

Upon returning to Vancouver from Stanford University in 1968, Shives met Toni Onley, who became Shives’ lifelong mentor. In 1973, hebegan making monochromatic relief and intaglio prints, and in 1975 he began creating large multi-colour block prints. This work earned him the reputation of being a successful printmaker.

Arnold’s work has been exhibited across Canada, the United States, in South Africa, in Europe and in Japan. Shives work can be found in numerous public and private collections including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. 

Selected Collections
Art Gallery of Ontario, ON
British Museum, London, UK
The Feckless Collection, Vancouver, BC
Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, N.Y., USA
MOMA, New York, USA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California, USA
British Museum, London, UK