About

Sharon works with printmaking processes and uses familiar, everyday imagery exploring ideas around nostalgia, memory, class and cultural heritage to question what people value in art and in life. Her practice responds to her environment and how people affect, influence and change it.

She produces work in series which have contrasting styles depending on her subject matter and processes. One strand is routed in 19th Century photographic Pictorialism in the creation of grainy, painterly, atmospheric photo-based prints to evoke certain emotions and moods; another is more abstract and/or decorative and explores patterns, grids and repetitions combined with layers of texture or colour or both. She likes to focus on the ubiquitous and celebrates the banality of familiar objects and scenes. Curtains, windows, mirrors and reflections are reoccurring motifs. She is fascinated by the mysteries of the interiors they screen, reflect and reveal. Her recent work focuses on lithography, photopolymer intaglio and linocut processes. She prints from her home studio in Birmingham using her beloved Bewick and Wilson etching press.

Sharon studied Fine Art at the University of Wolverhampton, completing a BA Honours degree in 1992. After graduating, she spent time in Paris, France painting outdoor murals before moving back to the UK. She gained her Master of Arts in Fine Art from Coventry University in 1999.

Her work has been shown in international print competitions, in exhibitions across Europe and the UK and displayed in the House of Commons. In 2019 she was the first prize winner of the inaugural Westmorland Landscape Prize and won the St Cuthbert’s Mill Prize at the Derby Print Open. In 2022 she was awarded a printmaking residency at the Grafikwerkstatt Dresden, Germany by the Coventry Dresden Arts Exchange and the City of Dresden.

Sharon is a freelance artist and educator: Associate Tutor, History of Art at University of Warwick; Associate Artist for Dementia Pathfinders CIC; Director for Make It Better CIC. Artist at Options for Life C.I.C.