Featured Artist
Sharon Harms
United States
Grand Prize Award Recipient
Purchase Award Recipient
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Sharon Harms
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About
Sharon Harms
Sharon Harms is a Nashville-based artist known for her hyper-realistic still life paintings that integrate instinctive expression with technical precision. Guided by feeling rather than a set plan, she assembles elements that speak to memory, emotion, and the unseen forces that bind them. Through exacting technique and refined realism, she gives form to fleeting thoughts and subtle connections that emerge from the objects in her compositions. Sharon's paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the International FiKVA Award for Painters, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Nashville, Manifest Gallery, and the American Women Artists Association. Her work has also been featured in Artists Magazine, Create!, and Studio Visit Magazine, and is held in private collections.
Artist Statement
My hyper-realistic still life paintings begin with an intuitive process. I gather objects not with a specific narrative in mind, but by responding to symbolism, beliefs, memory, and an undefinable pull—an intangible sense that certain things belong together. Every composition grows out of a single object that has captured my interest or piqued my curiosity in some way. As I add other objects, connections are revealed, and unexpected stories emerge.
With the objects settled into place, I turn to the discipline of hyperrealism. Through meticulous attention to detail, I aim to transform fleeting impressions into tangible realities. The act of painting becomes a way of committing these imagined stories and ideas to the physical world—through form, color, texture, and space.
For me, still life painting isn't about perfection or permanence, but about presence. My work is a space where intuition and precision meet—where the imagined becomes real, and the invisible is seen.
Raised in rural western Michigan, Sharon Harms excelled at drawing and painting from an early age. She began working as a graphic designer in 1973 at the age of 16 and went on to have a decades long career as an award-winning advertising art director. In 2020, she began pursuing painting full time. Her work is heavily influenced by her time in the advertising industry where she honed her skills as a visual communicator and storyteller. Although Sharon has taken an introductory college painting class, she is otherwise self-taught as an artist. She currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Exhibitions
2024 Allied Artists of America 111th Annual Exhibition, National Invitational Exhibition, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
2024 Hyperrealism, Group Exhibition, Blue Spiral 1 Gallery, Asheville, NC
2023 Up in Arms, National Juried Exhibition, The Museum of Contemporary Art Nashville (MOCAN), Nashville, TN
2023 At Rest: A Still Life Invitational, Group Exhibition, Customs House Art Museum, Clarksville, TN
2023 Pushing Forward Reaching Back, Annual National Juried Exhibition, American Women Artists, Brookgreen Gardens Museum, Murrells Inlet, SC
2022 Mimic, International Juried Exhibition, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
2022 Feminist Insight: Telling Her Story, National Juried Exhibition, Ellington-White Contemporary Gallery, Fayetteville, NC
2022 Breaking Through: The Rise of American Women Artists, National Juried Exhibition, American Women Artists, Customs House Art Museum, Clarksville, TN
2021 ViewPoint 53, Cincinnati Art Club, National Juried Exhibition, Cincinnati, OH
Online Exhibitions
2025 International FiKVA Award for Painters 2025, Top 50, International Juried Exhibition, FiKVA-foundation, Antwerp, Belgium
2023 Annual Online Juried Show, American Women Artists2023 Still, International Juried Exhibition, Best of Slow, ArtFluent.com
2023 International FiKVA Award for Painters2023, International Juried Exhibition, FiKVA-foundation, Antwerp, Belgium
2023 She, International Juried Exhibition, ArtFluent.com
2022 International FiKVA Award for Painters 2022, Top 35, International Juried Exhibition, FiKVA-foundation, Antwerp, Belgium
2022 Mood, International Juried Exhibition, ArtFluent.com
2022 Spring Online Exhibition, National Juried Exhibition, American Women Artists
2021 Narrative Still Life, National Juried Exhibition, Catholic Art Institute, Chicago, IL
Publications
2024 Art Fluent, Curator's Choice, March 2023
2023 Studio Visit Magazine, Volume 51
2022 Create Magazine!, Volume 33
2022 Artist Magazine, Artists Over 60, March/April Issue
Custom Art Commission Request
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