Jun-Pierre Shiozawa
Hello, my name is Jun-Pierre Shiozawa. I am a painter, illustrator, and art educator based in Nice, France.
I have a passion for telling stories through my art. I work in traditional media such as watercolor and oil as well as digital painting. I am also an art educator with over ten years experience teaching watercolor, oil painting, drawing and art history.
I have been drawing for as long as I can remember. My first job was as a caricaturist at the local town fair when I was twelve years old. I attended the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities where I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts. During my studies, my hunger to learn more about painting technique let me to Italy and Greece where I attended the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts in Paros, Greece and studied under Jane Morris Pack. Jane’s classes established a classical foundation in my painting and drawing which I rely on to this day.
After graduating I lived in Minneapolis, Martinique, Paris and Tokyo where I continued to paint and exhibited in group and solo art shows. In 2008 I returned to Greece thanks to a pivotal request to teach painting at the Aegean Center as Jane Pack’s replacement teacher for one semester. This one semester grew in to eight years as I became a permanent member of the faculty teaching drawing and painting.
Living in the Aegean deeply affected the way I approached painting and how I paint today. In Paros I preferred to paint in nature as opposed to indoors in studio. I began to watercolor for practical reasons—how fast I could paint and how easy it was to carry everything. Soon I found just how enjoyable and challenging watercolor is and how well the medium fits my own sensibilities and aesthetic.
At the Aegean Center I started to teach short courses on watercolor. I led my first watercolor workshop in 2011 called “The Craft of Watercolor” which merged my passions of watercolor painting and travel sketching/painting. Since then I have led workshops in Italy, Ireland and Greece all with the focus of discovering and experiencing a place through drawing and watercolor.
