About
Virginia Sharkey
I love the elemental and essential: that’s why I'm an abstract painter. My interest in deep space began as a child in the Midwest looking up at the stars on frosty nights. It has developed through many decades by the practice of mediation yielding an experience of an inner journey, and with my long participation as a violinist in symphony orchestras, constantly enveloped within the “space” in a symphonic composition. The confined perimeters of a traditional two dimensional canvas present to me a challenge that I embrace: how to use these limitations to make something mysterious, ambiguous, and new which aims towards a singular point of beauty and serenity among a dynamic play between the intimate and the infinite. Though I have been enlightened by many “spiritual” traditions, my work celebrates the quotidian: essence, the elemental particles as in the physicists’ universe, and the apprehension of presence or fullness, as exemplified in certain zen paintings. I often use the diving board of the structures of time to create an experience in the viewer that is celebratory: the puzzle and amazement of how it is just to be alive.