About the Artist
Thank you for visiting my web site.
Painting has been the main focus of my life since I was six years old. I began selling and exhibiting my artwork when I was fifteen; it was a pleasant surprise to realize that what was so interesting to me was also interesting to other people.
Just when I thought I was getting somewhere with art, I went to college and became an art major. What a surprise when I realized that I knew absolutely nothing about art and painting! I felt like a baby and started over again. I complemented my art courses at CMU with courses in religious studies. What I learned from the faculty in the art and religion departments impacted me beyond what I can write here, except to say they helped create my lifelong interest in art and religion. I’m grateful.
The Quiet years: For three years after college, I painted and worked third shift. There wasn’t much to do at work apart from monitoring, so I read and read and read. All I did for three years was read and paint. I remember reading a story about a man who almost became the victim of a mugging late one night. He pulled a gun on his potential assailant and said “I’ll kill you! I’m not afraid to go to jail, I’ll re-read Proust!” As a book lover, I completely relate. That’s not a bad sentence, really! Talk about being bounded in a nutshell and still being a king of infinite space! I could lock myself inside a big, beautiful novel like “In Search of Lost Time” and never come out. It takes a lot of discipline to live on the outside!
The Quiet years were followed by the NOISY years, and I think I’m still in the noisy years, actually. Remember independent book stores and record stores? They still existed in the 90’s. Working in those environments for so many years was unbelievably fun and exciting and I met and worked with great people, many of whom I still count as friends today. It was fun to meet authors at book signings (like the time I got to be Edward Albee’s “bodyguard”-I’m sure he felt very safe) and also see concerts for free, work in-store performances with my favorite bands and get promo cd’s. Independent stores may soon be a thing of the past, and that will be a sad day for us all.
In this, the new millennium, I went back to school. This time I’m getting a masters in business. Think Eno’s Oblique Strategy: Pick the strategy that takes you in a direction you wouldn’t embark upon if left to your own devices. Choose the thing that does not conform to your own tastes, since conformity to the self is a creative and mental death. It’s either that, or I’m really bored and want something difficult to do to create some aggravation in my life. I like the Oblique Strategy idea much better- it’s more fanciful.
I’ve got about a year left until graduation and, trust me, this does not conform to my tastes. I am learning a lot and meeting nice people, not to mention all the painting ideas the experience gives me, so that’s not too shabby. I reward my efforts by traveling around the country to art exhibits and concerts (Beck, Sonic Youth, Air—just a few recent concerts that came to mind). It sublimates all of the hard work I do, and its fun! Work hard and play hard, I say.
Here’s an example: The Flaming Lips “Yoshimi” tour hit Detroit on the same night as my Strategic Leadership final exam in the spring of 2003. Imagine my horror: I wasn’t about to miss that tour. What else could I do? I traveled to their concert in Columbus which fell on the night before my final. After the concert I told my story to Michael Ivins in a sake bar across the street from the Ohio State campus, and he agreed that we should always do what makes us happy, even if it’s a long drive.
All of these events inform my art in some way, I’m told. Many of you have provided great feedback regarding my new “Fragments” series. “Chinese New Year”, “Key” and “Pawn” fall into this category. This series has splintered into smaller sub-categories like the “Cryptozoologist” series, and the “Sayings” series (the painting “How To Know When To Kill What You Fear In Three Easy Steps”, for example). If they aren’t already on the website, they soon will be.
I have a recurring dream that I am eighteen and I’m in art history class. I am bewildered when presented with a test for which I’m not prepared. Emotions in dreams are where meaning is revealed, some say. I feel that I’m still just beginning.
Copyright © 2006 by Sharon Anderson. Use of any images, graphics or content herein requires her explicit written permission.