The Interaction of Power and Ephemeral Magnificence
The journey of Sharon Paster (Instagram: @sharonpaster) as a painter unfolds like a narrative each acquainted and completely her personal—an artist who stepped away from her craft for many years, solely to return with a sharpened sense of imaginative and prescient and function. Based mostly in Northern California, she creates semi-abstract oil work that seize extra than simply landscapes; they distill fleeting power into nonetheless kind. Her work leans into contrasts—layering fluid area with stable accents, readability with ambiguity—to evoke the stressed change of power that pulses by way of the pure world. From shimmering waterlines to shifting skies, Paster’s items are by no means static. They hover on the sting of movement, inviting viewers into an ongoing second.
Paster’s approach is as dynamic as her subject material. She works nearly completely with oil pigment sticks, a medium that permits for an intuitive and rapid utility. These sticks allow her to mix, mark, glaze, and regulate immediately on the canvas, mirroring the natural rhythms of her artistic course of. The physicality of this strategy lends itself to the tactile, layered surfaces in her work, the place backgrounds emerge as blended fields of sentimental tones interrupted by assertive, typically sudden, accents of coloration. Oranges and blues steadily punctuate her work, creating moments of shock amid the serenity.
Her visible vocabulary is full of unfastened geometries, layered coloration fields, and gestural traces that evoke terrain and reminiscence with out prescribing a story. Although grounded in abstraction, her work typically recommend pure parts—rocks, hills, water—hovering on the fringe of recognition. This delicate stress between illustration and abstraction is the place Paster thrives. She seeks to supply a visible “hook” with out anchoring the viewer too firmly in definition. It’s an strategy that leaves room for interpretation and creates a wealthy area for reflection.
Sharon Paster: Between Panorama and Line
Paster’s apply is pushed by her seek for what she describes as a “candy spot”—a spot the place abstraction and illustration intermingle with out overt readability. Her topics, whether or not a mountain vary or coastal rocks, are handled with the identical painterly contact that prioritizes spatial relationships and the emotive high quality of composition. Over time, her subject material has shifted fluidly: starting with man-made objects, transitioning into bushes and rocks from the Marin County panorama, and finally increasing into explorations of sky, water, and even the human kind. Every shift marks not a departure however an growth—an ongoing negotiation between theme and approach.
Her present deal with the determine presents a brand new problem. Not like panorama parts that may stay ambiguous, the determine carries private resonance and a requirement for readability. Paster finds herself grappling with find out how to summary the human physique with out stripping it of its emotional cost. Nonetheless, she stays dedicated to the pursuit, bouncing between topics and trusting the widespread thread of motion, air, and connection to bind her work collectively. This open-ended curiosity retains her apply vibrant and evolving, somewhat than mounted in any single visible path.
All through all of it, the constant use of oil pigment sticks anchors her work. This materials aligns completely along with her process-driven mindset. Initially found as a extra forgiving various to grease pastels, pigment sticks supplied her the fluidity of oil paint with the immediacy of drawing. Their lipstick-like texture permits for spontaneity and management—important qualities for an artist working on the fringe of abstraction. With this software, Paster’s canvases turn out to be fields of intuitive decision-making, every layer a response to the earlier one, every mark a dialogue between stability and spontaneity.
Artwork Born from Ambiance and Instinct
The Northern California panorama performs a vital position in shaping the power of Paster’s work. Residing and dealing simply north of San Francisco in Sausalito, she is immersed in a artistic neighborhood surrounded by coastal magnificence, open-minded thinkers, and a robust outside tradition. It’s not simply the visible points of the Bay Space that affect her—it’s the sense of motion, the rhythm of tides, the ever-shifting fog. Her early work of sneakers rapidly gave option to depictions of bushes in dialog with one another, which then advanced into meditations on rocks and our bodies of water. All of those parts function metaphors for interpersonal dynamics and unseen forces.
Her work resists straightforward categorization. Whereas grounded in formal coaching and an instructional background in wonderful arts, Paster’s apply stays instinctive. After an extended hiatus from portray, it was the uninhibited creativity of kids—and the scent of turpentine wafting from an artwork college window—that reignited her ardour. Her return was something however informal; she immersed herself in lessons, surrounded herself with like-minded artists, and finally discovered her tribe throughout the Faculty of Marin’s artistic applications. The expertise rekindled her perception that artwork doesn’t should be monumental to be significant—it merely must be alive.
This sense of vitality is what Paster brings into her studio daily. Situated within the ICB Constructing in Sausalito, her studio is a light-filled area that overlooks the water and acts as each a sanctuary and a hub for collaboration. It’s right here that she balances solitude and neighborhood, productiveness and pause. She works for hours at a stretch, then steps again to view her work by way of contemporary eyes. Whether or not she’s mixing pigments immediately on canvas or participating in dialogue with fellow artists, Paster makes use of her studio as a spot to discover not simply kind and coloration, however presence and notion.
Sharon Paster: The place Reminiscence Turns into Motion
On the coronary heart of Paster’s work lies a robust sense of ambiguity—a refusal to supply closure or certainty. Her compositions ask questions somewhat than give solutions. Is {that a} rock or a reclining determine? Is that this a shoreline or an emotional panorama? The paradox is deliberate, and it’s the place the emotional efficiency of her work lives. Her canvases are neither chaotic nor overly managed. As an alternative, they’re balanced ecosystems the place each coloration, form, and line participates in a bigger dialog. This high quality permits viewers to have interaction at their very own tempo, discovering private resonance in her evocative types.
Even when she introduces the determine, it’s performed with restraint. Faces are absent, our bodies are instructed somewhat than depicted, and the emotional weight comes from posture and placement somewhat than expression. These figures exist not as characters however as energies, folded into their environment like ideas drifting into consciousness. They echo the landscapes she paints—each are stable but dissolving, current but unreachable. This strategy mirrors her philosophy: nothing is mounted, all the things is fleeting. That mantra turns into a quiet engine driving the construction and softness inside her work.
Paster’s work function visible meditations—anchored in reminiscence, sensation, and an acute consciousness of spatial stress. Her items aren’t merely noticed; they’re felt. They resist being pinned down, similar to the moments they search to seize. Whether or not considered in a gallery or found on-line, her work invitations viewers right into a second of stillness, the place notion slows and nuance reigns. Sharon Paster has created a physique of labor that doesn’t shout to be heard. As an alternative, it whispers, hums, and pulses with the quiet rhythms of time and place.
