ISE
SHARP
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ABOUT
“I am a Jamaican-American artist of European, Chinese, and West African ancestry, shaped by a transnational upbringing between New York, Jamaica, and Tokyo, and guided by the philosophical teachings of non-duality. My heritage and life experience inform a painting practice rooted in inquiry, presence, and transformation.
Using organic materials such as charcoaled bone, fruit seeds, chalk, mica, and marble dust, I create monochromatic works that serve as living vessels, spaces of attunement between the physical and metaphysical, the personal and the cosmic.
My visual language draws from ancestral wisdom, global art histories, and the rhythms of natural cycles. I explore impermanence, interconnectedness, and the unseen, often engaging with pareidolia and the idea of a postmodern still life. Each piece becomes a ritual space, reflecting the fluid nature of matter and perception.
In my practice, painting is an act of sensing rather than depicting, as meaning emerges through materiality and relationship rather than fixed representation. Each work is a meditation on the layered cosmology of being.”
CV
Education
2024 – 2025: MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London
2017 – 2021: BA Studio Art, Pomona College, California, USA
Group Exhibitions
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
Residencies and Awards
2025 – Teaching Residency in collaboration of University of Gloucestershire, UK
2021 - The Matthew Klopfleisch Prize in Art, Pomona College, USA
Interviews/Press
2024 - “Body Mapping with Ise Sharp”, And the Sun, New York, USA
2020 - “Voices on Silence”, Jamaican Observer, Kingston, Jamaica