A native of Great Britain, Sharon has spent much of her adult life travelling and working throughout S.E. Asia and Australasia until falling in love with British Columbia and emigrating there in 2006.

A long abiding passion and concern for the natural world resulted in careers in Zoology and Landscape Architecture which combined her interest in ecology and habitat restoration with her formal training in design and scientific illustration. The move to British Columbia in 2006 surrounded Sharon with an abundance of artistic inspiration and focused her on a new career as a full time artist. This has finally allowed all her personal and academic interests to converge and be reflected in her work.

Sharon was juried into the Federation of Canadian Artists in January 2008 and is a member of the Pastel Artists of Canada. Her work is found in private collections in Canada, France and the U.K. She resides in the West Kootenays in British Columbia, where she has built an off-grid straw bale house with her husband.

Like many people, I have a long and abiding passion for the natural world. I remember spending hours in my youth with my nose buried in a full set of wildlife encyclopedias and walking in the woods and meadows with my parents, identifying native plants and animals. Today, I am fortunate enough to live surrounded by wildlife, from the large bears, cougars, moose, deer and coyote, to smaller otters, chipmunks, ground squirrels and insects. There are also the birds, water fowl on the lake, ospreys nesting on the hydro poles at the bottom of our land, bald eagles fishing on the flats for migrating salmon. I am overloaded with inspiration!

My painting style is Realism, to a point. However, I find that I reflect more on my emotional response to the animal and its fundamental essence than the depiction of individual details of fur and feathers. Because of this, colours are frequently emotional, light is transformed and often, context is ambiguous. I work exclusively in soft pastel as I find that the immediacy and vibrancy of the pastels complement and strengthen my emotional response to my subject.

I work from field sketches, gestural studies and observational notes in combination with photographs and video clips that I have taken. Wildlife doesn't often oblige with a long pose, so I also study anatomy, behaviour and locomotion. My art work has brought me back full circle to my Zoology degree!

Whilst I typically have a clear mental image of my painting, I still create thumbnails before I start. I use them for refining the composition, values and colour palettes. They allow me to rapidly translate my mental image into a tangible product and provide a structure which allows me freedom to lose myself in the final painting.

All my paintings are created with multiple layers of soft pastels (Winsor Newton and Terry Ludwig) on prepared masonite board or on Canson Mi-Teintes paper. I typically start with layering the complementary colour to the required finish colour, sometimes fixing in between layers, sometimes allowing mixing. This makes the final colours really 'pop'. I focus on varied mark making with very limited blending.

I have been fortunate to have lived and travelled throughout Europe, S.E. Asia and Australasia. These collections are inspired by the people and places I encountered, above and below ground!