Water Music

Water music is a self-portrait in which I embody the experience of women in modern society, labouring under the promise that they can have it all.

They can sit at the corporate table, play football and participate in the Arts– but they must still mother well, maintain domestic harmony and provide emotional support.

They should be grateful. And sexy.

Instead, they feel overwhelmed and defeated.

The washing is on the line, the baby crying, the meeting unprepared, the fishnets not so sexy.

I do not seek to blame anyone for the impossibility of this task; merely to recognise it and to invite us to question entrenched roles and expectations that make true equality and inclusion so hard to achieve.

The title Water music derives from the background colour, a Dulux house paint I buy from Bunnings. It is calm, perfectly opaque, and always reliable. It seemed fitting.

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Sharon is a visual artist from Melbourne, best known for her bold use of colour and abstracted figuration. Working predominantly with acrylic paint, she also likes to experiment with oils, pastels, ink and collage. Themes explored through Sharon's work include human rights, social justice, mental illness and feminism.

Sharon says "My work is influenced by many things across the personal, the political and the aesthetic. Whilst I paint landscapes, portraits and abstract paintings, I am most particularly interested in figurative works. Body language, story telling and the diversity of human experience are all themes you will find in my work."

In 2018 she was selected for an international artist residency at Chateau d' Orquevaux in France where she worked on a series of paintings exploring female identity and its intersection with language. Many of the works from this period were exhibited in Melbourne in her "Falling Women" Exhibition. "
Sharon's paintings are held in private collections across Australia, in the UK, France , Singapore, Canada and the USA. 3 of her paintings are held in the permanent collection at Chateau d' Orquevaux.

She is the artist in residence at Liquid Amber Press, a publishing company that works at the intersection of visual arts and poetry, and is represented by Kelli Lundberg Art in Victoria and Satch and Co in NSW