Sharon Shepherd

Abstraction, through the twin processes of additive layering and erosion, comes to life on Sharon Shepherd's canvases and materializes as an imagined world of mystic symbols, vanishing cultures, and ancient architecture. Her muscular scrawls and weathered fresco-like surfaces transport the viewer into distant lands where crumbling walls collide with cloud formations and landscapes emerge from the hieroglyphs of the artist's deft hand.  These stormy paintings thrill our eyes.  They spark the kindling of our sprit. 

 

In the studio, Sharon's inspiration comes from daily observations, travel, and a multitude of photographs of objects and subjects that pique her interest.  Upon reflection, she reinterprets the concrete and the literal into a vast language of personal creative vocabulary.  The floor becomes both her palette and easel where she scrapes, builds, upbraids and occludes, mining for definition on several canvasses in tandem until, finally, a finished work emerges from the physical labors of time.  

 

Sharon Shepherd's exhibition career began in 1977 featuring her works on paper at the Department of Architecture Gallery, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and has continued throughout the western US and Japan with more than 50 solo and group shows in galleries and museums.  Post 2017, her work has mostly taken the form of photography, embracing the same deeply textured and nuanced voice as the surfaces of her paintings.