fine art & illustration
BIO
Michael Sharp grew up in West Texas, where he spent all of his grade school years focused on visual arts. During high school his work started gaining in recognition, leading to numerous awards and honors, including scholarships to the Savannah College of Art & Design and the Rhode Island School of Design. However, he chose to stay close to home and earned his BFA in drawing and painting from Texas Tech University, with a secondary emphasis in graphic design.
After graduating college, he was hungry for a change of scenery and decided to relocate to Los Angeles, CA. While there, he spent several years training in performing arts to appease a lifelong curiosity for acting. He has performed in several stage productions and independent films. However, his primary love for the visual arts still remained. After spending many years in the acting world and working in the corporate sector, he returned to his passion for drawing and painting. His work has been exhibited in several galleries and venues in both Los Angeles and San Diego, CA, in addition to galleries and collections in Santa Fe, NM and Dallas, TX.
After twenty plus years on the West Coast, Michael decided to relocate to the Southeast. He continues his passion for making art, cultivating and growing as a gallery artist and fine art illustrator. He's also an art instructor and teaches classes in both drawing and painting, with a specialty in figure drawing.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My art is primarily inspired by objects or snapshots in time that have come to hold a significant place in mainstream society or become iconic in nature at a broader cultural level. I'll also pull from the everyday and commonplace, to elevate or highlight the subject, with the hope of having it seen in a new way or from a different perspective. Sometimes my inspiration comes from more personal objects or experiences from my own childhood and past history that have left a significant emotional imprint on me, positive or negative. I feel the primary impulse that feeds my work is a constant search for and questioning of where we find meaning and comfort in life and an examination of the validity to how we assign meaning, belief systems and importance to certain objects and aspects of the environment around us. Some of the common themes that emerge in my work are nostalgia, spirituality, nature, objects of celebration and ritual, and images related to anatomy and the mystery of the human body.
I like to work almost exclusively with a black and white palette. The limited palette keeps the visual format stripped down while letting the subject remain the primary focus. This limitation also helps me adhere more to my love of drawing over traditional painting. Though I work primarily with representational imagery, I continue to seek the essence and deeper richness of the subject through expressive strokes and bold mark making.
