Artist Bio: Shawn Zents

Shawn Zents , born 1965, in Lima, Ohio. Raised in Ventura, California, Zents became interested in studio art while in college, and subsequently attended the California Art Institute in Calabasas, California, where he studied under the school’s founder and master teacher, Fred Fixler, for three years. At the beginning of his professional career Zents worked as a commercial artist: first in the movie industry, doing one-sheet posters and designs for movie trailers; then in the advertising industry where his artwork was used in campaigns for Pfizer, Chevrolet, Levis, Old Navy, and Saturn among others. More recently, he took the skills he had learned from his initial training and his commercial career, and shifted into a new career as a gallery artist.

The training Zents had received from Fixler – even though the latter was primarily a commercial illustrator in a direct line of teachers from Dean Cornwell – became invaluable in his new career. Concepts central to Zents’ figurative paintings which he learned from Fixler include the following (quoted from Fixler in Nason’s Notes on Drawing); “Drawing is describing form. You must learn to see, not so much learn to draw. Light and shadow in itself produces design. It is light shapes that give form; the dark shapes make the pattern.” With this background, in addition to his fascination with the works of John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn among others, it is no surprise that Zents describes his own paintings as interpretations of “Sculpted Light”.

As with other highly talented contemporary representational artists of his generation, Zents began teaching others at an early stage in his career, and taught from 1991 to 2001 at the California Art Institute, Associates in Art, and his own Shawn Zents studio. Some of the students who worked with him are starting to develop nationwide reputations in their own right. Zents currently resides and maintains his studio in Simi Valley, California.