WENDY SHARPE
Sydney, Australia | Born 1960 | Lives and works in Sydney & Paris
Wendy Sharpe AM is one of Australia’s most recognised contemporary figurative painters. Born in Sydney in 1960, she studied at Seaforth Technical College before completing a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts at the City Art Institute, followed by postgraduate studies and a Master of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. She has developed a distinctive and highly expressive approach to painting and drawing, with the human figure remaining at the centre of her practice.
Sharpe’s paintings are immediately recognisable for their energetic brushwork, rich colour and strong sense of narrative. Her subjects frequently emerge from the worlds of theatre, cabaret, circus and performance, as well as from everyday life, travel and personal experience. Women appear prominently throughout her work, sometimes as performers or characters and at other times as mysterious figures inhabiting imagined or psychologically charged spaces. Her longstanding interest in the performing arts has included work with the Australian Ballet, Australian Opera, Circus Oz, burlesque performers and drag shows.
This theatrical quality can be seen particularly well in the works represented by Plum Gallery. Figures appear caught in private or performative moments, surrounded by loose, expressive passages of paint. The two smaller works depicting a woman in a blue corseted costume are especially characteristic of Sharpe’s fascination with costume and performance. Rather than attempting photographic realism, she uses colour, gesture and freely handled paint to suggest personality, atmosphere and emotion.
Sharpe achieved national prominence early in her career, winning the Sulman Prize in 1986. In 1996 she won the Archibald Prize with Self Portrait – as Diana of Erskineville. She has twice won the Portia Geach Memorial Award and has received numerous other awards, scholarships and residencies during a career spanning more than four decades. Her official biography records more than 70 solo exhibitions in Australia and internationally.
A particularly significant chapter in Sharpe’s career came in 1999 when the Australian War Memorial appointed her an Australian Official Artist to document the INTERFET peacekeeping operation in East Timor. She was the first woman appointed by the Memorial as an official artist since the Second World War. Travelling with Australian personnel, Sharpe produced drawings and paintings recording soldiers, East Timorese people and scenes of everyday life. The resulting works combined observation with the same strong interest in people, narrative and human experience that characterises her broader practice.
Travel has remained an important part of Sharpe’s life and work. She has undertaken artist residencies and projects in locations including Paris, Egypt, Antarctica, Mexico and China, continually bringing new people, places and experiences into her imagery. She divides her working life between Sydney and Paris.
In 2023 Wendy Sharpe was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to the visual arts and to the community. Her continuing importance within Australian contemporary art was further recognised with the major exhibition Spellbound at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2024. She continues to paint, draw and exhibit extensively, maintaining the energetic, imaginative and deeply human approach that has characterised her work throughout her career.
