John Carlos Artshop

Born: 1956 in Acores, Portugal
Immigrated to Canada in 1961
Current Status: Retired from IT Executive Management July 2019
Now a full time Artist.

I have always been interested in drawing and using colors. As a young child I would watch programs like Mr. Dressup, because he would have segments, where he would tell stories, and draw at the same time. After the program, I would often draw my own pictures.

As the oldest of 4 children, my mother would often ask me to do something with the younger ones, to keep them calm. I quickly learned that drawing different pictures for them was the way to go.

In Grade 6, I partnered with another student to create a school newspaper. Most of my contribution were the drawings, that went with the articles, that my friend created. It was quite a lucrative venture.

Fast forward, to my High School and CEGEP days, I started to use oil paint in my artwork. And for a period of many years, most of my works were in black and white.

In the last 5 years, I began working with acrylic paint and using different colors. As my office work was quite intense, my art output was limited. Then I had a breakthrough 3 years ago, when we moved to a new office location, and volunteers were called upon, to decorate the employee cafeteria. The only stipulation was that we only worked with the "company colors". These were the standard colors that we could use in our Powerpoint presentations. I had just been to New York a few months
before, and was inspired from much of what I saw, including large decorative prints. I quickly decided to follow along these lines and came up with a "pop art" rendition of New York and all the key sights. This included the Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building, Times Square and Brooklyn. All in one neat package. I received much praise for my painting, and this got me to begin painting more. My next one was a large black and white of Picasso's Don Quixote. I hung this one in my office and it was also quite popular with my colleagues. Now that I have retired, I have painted well over 100 paintings of various styles.