Sharon Barnes is a Los Angeles-based visual artist, born in Sacramento, CA. Working at the intersections of abstraction, process, and materials, she creates paintings, sculptural assemblages, and installations while investigating the evocative possibilities of abstract visual language and a poetic use of materials to explore the conceptual backdrop of Black cultural expression, critical theory, and familial and collective memory.
Exhibiting both nationally and internationally, Barnes’ large-scale mixed media painting, “Music is What We Make in Music’s Absence” is currently installed in the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. Her 40-foot-wide vitrine installation, “Replotted Paths & Replanted Gardens” is currently on display in the Tom Bradley International Terminal of the Los Angeles Airport (LAX). Notable group exhibitions include Recent Acquisitions at the Crocker Museum, “Adornment/Artifact” curated by jill moniz and supported by The Getty, and “Continuum” in conjunction with The Kinsey Collection of African Art & History at SoFi Stadium.
Barnes’ work is held in the permanent collections of the California African Art Museum, the Crocker Art Museum, the UCLA Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies, the City of Inglewood, and others.
She is a recipient of the MacDowell Fellowship, NH; the City of Los Angeles Individual Master Artist Fellowship (COLA); the Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency, MI; and the Spelman College Summer Art Colony/Taller Portobelo, Panama. She earned her MFA at Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles and had been an undergraduate student of renowned artist and historian, Samella Lewis.
