Shan Thomas

Born and raised on the West Coast, Shan is a former teacher and chartered accountant, with a lifelong passion for painting. She has lived on Vancouver Island for over 25 years, raising her family here, and recently returned to Victoria after several years in Calgary.

In 2010 she turned to art full-time, starting with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. She has had shows in Vancouver and Calgary, and recently returned to Victoria, where her show “Serendipity and Sea Changes” ran at the Gallery Splash! in Esquimalt  (Dec 2022 - Jan 2023).

Shan can be found painting either en plein air or in her studio in Victoria B.C., accompanied by her Sheltie “Rowan” (who likes to be included in every photo!).

She is a former member of the Southern Alberta Art Alliance (SAAA), and currently paints regularly with “The Alfrescoes”, a group of plein air painters based in Victoria.

Drawing on her teaching background, Shan has hosted paint-night sessions, and instructed workshops for residents in long-term memory care. Her work, including commissions, is widely held in private, public and corporate collections.

I am inspired by my own backyard, and the often unrecognized moments of great beauty in each day. My artwork tends toward the emotive and ephemeral – frequently colour filled, with soft edges and curved lines. I find the point of intersection between abstraction and realism to be compelling territory, and am drawn to transition moments such as dawn, dusk, or a close-up view of the familiar, when it becomes strangely unfamiliar.

I constantly turn to nature for inspiration. And the closer I look, the more blurred the line between realism and abstraction becomes: the shapes of logs on a beach, or the negative spaces in a vine of sweet peas, for example.

I work in multiple layers of varying thicknesses of paint. Rubbing out, spraying, scratching, layering. The flexibility and quick drying time of acrylics make them a perfect fit for my process. And my daily visual photo journal is an endless source of reference material for my work.

A recurring theme for me is “My Garden – A Closer Look”, in which I zoom in on multiple photos and develop compositions which combine my love of nature with my interest in exploring the edge of abstraction.