Background

Sharon has been drawing for as long as she can remember.  Her early memories are of collecting any scrap piece of clean white paper from the cardboard inside shirt boxes to large rolls of butchers’ paper giving her a generous space on which to draw. This memory has stayed with her as she still loves the look of fresh new white paper. Art has been a part of her life in one form or another ever since.

Her childhood fascination with drawing cartoons and getting them ‘just right’ led her to a job in her early 20’s  as an animator for Hanna-Barbera, then for a number of years with Burbank Studios, a company specialising in full-length animated feature films for television, such as Wind in the Willows and other classics. She has also done some freelance work for Disney.  

Her priorities shifted somewhat when her first son was born, and art became more of a hobby she enjoyed when she had time.  During this time she did portraits of children and pets for friends and relatives, mainly working in acrylics and oils.

She later completed a TAFE course in Design, mainly to build a suitable portfolio for further education and used this to successfully gain entry into the University of Western Sydney to undertake a Visual Arts degree.

In 2010 she started watercolour classes at the Nepean Art Society, viewing this as a challenge to explore a medium she had not worked in before. Having drawn for over 50 years, she found this skill to be a most important ingredient in making better paintings.

From 2011 she has exhibited her work successfully at various art shows winning a number of awards.

She now currently works mostly in watercolour and graphite and her main focus is to paint and draw people, finding portraits one of the most challenging and rewarding subjects.

Sharon was recently accepted as a participating artist into the 2014 ‘Art Journey-Portraits and Figures’ hardcover book, an international publication produced by North Light Books. The book is a collection of portraits by artists chosen from all over the world.

Qualifications

Visual Arts Degree - University of Western Sydney.

Art Group Memberships

Nepean Art Society