Blog post 1
Hi. Welcome to the Art By Sharone Blog!
I am so excited (terrified?) of having you here.
Each week, or I will try to each week, share various things about my painting process, thoughts, ideas, etc.
But first, let’s begin with who am I am how I started to paint.
I am Sharone (Shuh-row-n) Halevy (Huh-lev-ie)
I was born in Engelwood, NJ but grew up in NYC. My whole young life I was sure I was going to be a Broadway performer. I was a talented kid; strong singer, had a knack for acting, and on occasion could really look like a dancer (in the theater world we call this being a ‘strong mover’) I went to a performing arts high school in Times Square majoring in musical theater, studied opera twice a week, went to an arts camp in the summers, and basically spent every waking moment studying scripts and scores, you know, in case I went to see a show and the lead performer breaks their ankle and they needed someone from the audience to be able to jump onstage and take over.
But with time, the life of being a performer, for many reasons, started to really weigh on me. I was deeply unhappy. And so, after many tears on various park benches throughout the Upper West Side and Midtown, I decided to….nope. Not paint. Direct theater. Which I loved. And lead to teaching theater. Which I also loved.
So how does painting come into all of this? Well, it didn’t really. As a kid I would Silk screen a bunch (like what Andy Warhol did) and I loved to do figurative drawing, but it was never something I wanted to do for a living.
One day, I was 24, I was having a lot of emotions and I didn’t know what to do with them, so between rehearsals for shows I was developing I bought a 3 x 4ft canvas and a bunch of…nope. Not paint. Sharpies. And I drew a woman lying on her side.
And loved it. I was so nice to connect to my visual art self again.
But, fun fact, Sharpie fades pretty quickly in the sunlight. I slowly watched my canvas drawing fade into oblivion so I decided to buy some….YES, PAINT! I painted over it and fell in love with the texture, the smell, the feeling of the acrylic. How it moved. How fast it dried. It was so exciting.
Then, I decided to paint something without drawing it first and oh boy did it fail miserably. I couldn’t figure it out. and I got so angry at the canvas I just started to cover everything in gray. A blah color for a blah feeling. But then it started to feel like something different…I took a step back and felt like I was looking at an empty stage.
Usually when I start to direct a show, after I have read the script, I will see if I can just sit in the theater and just see how the show can feel to me, and that usually came in color and spacing. And it hit me, that is how I want to approach the canvas. To create something that tells the feeling of a story without spelling it out or creating a still life.
Our memories are never accurate. What we remember is a memory of a memory. Like a long game of telephone. Over time, we may lose the picture but we don’t really lose the feeling of a moment. THAT is what I wanted to create.
So I treated the paint as though it was lighting design, or a camera with a wide shutter speed causing everything to blur that was moving and created my first abstract painting
I posted the painting on Instagram back when we would use filters and got my first commission. (Yes, it was ridiculous and incredibly lucky) and honestly….thats how it all happened. Over time I was painting out of my apartment in the mornings before I went to a day job, or to rehearsals, or classes. Then with time, painting became my primarily income and I found a type of peace and joy in this life that I didn’t even realize I was seeking.
My New Year’s Resolution:
Every year I make the same resolution (as of two years ago…but I vowed to remind myself of this every year)
Not everything in life needs to have a lesson attached. Some things are just crappy experiences and some are amazing. Some we do learn from and some we really don’t. I went on a horrible residency last summer and I came back and it was such a relief to just say, “that was just a shitty experience.” And move on.
But what I do think we always need to focus on, is what we hear. Just being able to clock and accept the things we experience. If I didn’t do this, I would have pushed painting away, minimized it, or mocked myself for the life that had a glimmer of something else that was kind of holding its hands wide open.
So. That’s how I came to start painting in a nutshell shell.
I am so excited to start sharing more things over time, such as:
What is Abstract Art?
What is the line or circle in my paintings?
Artists I love
Books that have inspired paintings
And more.
Thank you for reading, and Welcome to my blog.
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