ISE
SHARP
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Curfew Bells
Between Fields
Fields of Return
Art for the Ashram
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About the Work
My work moves through questions of spirituality, ancestry, landscape, and the Divine. Through clouds, rivers, mountains, mist, and atmosphere, the works consider how a sacred presence might be encountered within the natural world and through states of attention, stillness, and listening within. What forms of communion become possible when we slow down enough to observe? How might landscape function not only as place, but as a threshold between the visible and unseen?
I think about what a place might hold after we have left it. Can a landscape contain memory? Can it carry traces of those who have passed through it? Can the natural world become a threshold between the physical and spiritual?
I am drawn to the things we cannot always see, but somehow know are there: a memory held in the body, a place that stays with us long after we have left it, an inherited gesture or story, or a feeling of presence within a landscape.
At the centre of my practice is devotion, an impulse to express awe, adoration, and gratitude for that beyond myself. I think of devotion not only through prayer or established religious practice, but through remembering, listening, observing, making, and remaining present.
About the Materials
I work mainly with natural and organic materials, including charcoaled fruit seeds, shells, precious stones, and pigments foraged from the landscape. I apply these to raw canvas and, with the sun, use a cyanotype light-sensitive dying process, allowing the paintings to emerge.
I am drawn to materials that have live through transformation. They come from the earth and carry their own histories, changing through fire, pressure, time, and contact. I allow their textures, imperfections, fragility, and unpredictability to remain visible within the work. The materials are not simply a means of making the image; they become part of what the painting is asking.
Something as tangible as a seed, shell, stone, or pigment can become a way of thinking about memory, mortality, creation, and the unseen. In this way, the earth and the sun enters the painting not only as subject, but as material presence.
About Me
My experience of identity has been shaped by movement. I have lived between New York, Tokyo, London, and now Germany, and come from Jamaican, European, Chinese, and West African ancestry. These different places, histories, and cultures have made identity feel less like something fixed and more like something continually forming.
My encounters with traditions including Judaism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Hinduism have also shaped my relationship with the unseen. Rather than resolving these influences into a single belief or identity, I allow them to exist alongside one another.
For me, displacement can be a space of separation, but also a space where different histories, beliefs, memories, and forms of devotion can meet.
My work is influenced by Gutai, Shan shui painting, Surrealism, Caribbean Intuitive painting, and spiritual abstraction. These influences come together in a practice that moves between the intimate and the vast, stillness and movement, the physical and metaphysical.
I am interested in the point where forms begin to dissolve and one thing can become another. The paintings create both macro and micro spaces - places that can feel like landscapes, bodies, memories, inner worlds, or something beyond definition.
I am currently based in Passau, Germany. I hold a BA in Studio Art from Pomona College and an MA in Painting from Royal College of Art in London.
CURRICULUM VITAE
Education
2024 – 2025: MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London
2017 – 2021: BA Studio Art, Pomona College, California, USA
Residencies and Awards
2025 – Wild Moods, Guyan Huaxiang Art Center, Lishui, China
2025 – Teaching Residency in collaboration of University of Gloucestershire, UK
2021 - The Matthew Klopfleisch Prize in Art, Pomona College, USA
Group Exhibitions
2025 - Chimera in a Vat, Sitnalt, Hypha Studios, London, UK
2025 – Footfall Echos, Safe House, London, UK
2025 – Degree Show, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2025 – Parrhesia ARK, Royal College of Art, The Hockney Gallery, London, UK
2025 – Ancestral Utopias, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2025 – Works on Paper, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2024 – Tiny Works, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2023 – SAC Summer Showcase, Alison Bradley Projects, New York, USA
2022 – SAC Summer Showcase, Alison Bradley Projects, New York, USA
2021 – Deviance, Static Arts Collective, Lazy Susan Gallery, New York, USA
2021 – Now We Must Depart Again, Chan Gallery, California, USA
2021 – Kindling, Chan Gallery, California, USA
2021 – Artfem, Biennial of Macau, Macau, China
Interviews/Press
2024 - “Body Mapping with Ise Sharp”, And the Sun, New York, USA
2020 - “Voices on Silence”, Jamaican Observer, Kingston, Jamaica