Shane Weare was born in Lyndhurst, England, on August 20, 1936. He attended Falmouth College of Art in Cornwall, England and studied printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London where he received a A.R.C.A (Associate of the Royal College of Art) in 1963. He then taught at the central School of Art and Design (London). In 1962 he traveled across the United States with a group of students. Weare drew his way across America state by state, producing a series of terse prints that were so deeply personal as to be an intimate diary of the nation. He briefly returned home, but, after graduating, found himself in 1963 as a postgraduate student at the University of Iowa, studying printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky.

In the ensuing years Weare married and became a U.S. citizen, taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1970 he and Sally moved to Northern California to teach at the San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of Arts and Crafts and, in 1971, started teaching at Sonoma State University in Cotati, California where he became a professor, teaching art and printmaking, and from which he retired as Professor Emeritus in 2000.

In 2017 Shane and Sally lost their home, their artwork and their personal art collection in the Nuns Fire in Sonoma County, California. As an unfortunate result his work is hard to find. Shane and Sally have since rebuilt their home and started over.