SHARON PASTER

I am drawn to the energy around me—the force of a pounding surf, the motion of cars on a highway, the blink of an eye, the way objects in space talk to one another. How one motion affects the next is a continuing source of fascination.

I layer oil colors, play with space, and contrast the solid with the ephemeral—the fixed with the fluid—to replicate the forces of nature at work. In my paintings, time is suspended, but we are just on the brink of chaos. The surface is often calm, but the tension is ever-present. Everything pulsates with life, on the verge of movement and change.

Surrounded by nature where I work, I’m fortunate to live in a beautiful place like Marin County, CA—on the edge of San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. My studio is in Sausalito, CA, but I also make frequent trips to Los Cabos in Baja California. I was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and moved around quite a bit growing up, living in Connecticut, then Southern California, and then New England, where I put down roots as a teenager.

I moved to Northern California in my thirties, where I resumed painting after a long hiatus, questioning where I was going with my art. I graduated as a painter from Brandeis University, in Massachusetts, Phi Beta Kappa within 3 years, and began a career in high tech marketing communications in 1976. Although I began taking painting lessons at the age of 13, and had always been intoxicated by the smell of turpentine in my grandfather’s basement studio, I only resumed painting after my 2 boys started school. Classes at College of Marin in drawing, painting and sculpture, got me going again at full speed.

I’ve been exhibiting in Northern California since 2002, participating in numerous group and solo shows—including the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art and the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. My work has been seen in Art of Northern California, the Serena & Lily Catalog, Luxe Magazine, as well as Marin Magazine and San Francisco Magazine. I sit on the ICB Art Association’s Board of Directors and am represented by a number of galleries in the Bay Area as well as Boston, MA.