ISE
SHARP
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About
“I approach the self and painting as sites of convergence—where body and mind, matter and spirit, the personal and the cosmic meet.“
Ise (意聖) Athena Henriques Sharp is a Jamaican-American artist based in London. Born of European, Chinese, and West African ancestry, raised between New York, Jamaica, and Tokyo, and shaped by philosophical teachings of non-duality, she turns to painting to ask questions of existence: What is self, if not spirit made visible? Where do we begin and end in the life/death/life cycle?
Ise’s work is rooted in the subtle world—what is felt but not seen, known but not named. Each canvas is a devotional space, grounded in presence and inquiry. She draws from ancestral wisdom, natural cycles, and global art histories—including Gutai’s (具体) radical material-body expressions, the poetic atmospheres of Shan shui (山水), the logograph language of Chinese calligraphy (书法), and the Renaissance’s alchemical understandings of substance and form. Through abstract mark-making and gestural movement, she forms a cross-cultural visual language that works to challenge notions of authority and embody multiplicity.
Vital to her process is a ritual sensitivity to material. She works with pigments made from charcoaled bone and fruit seeds, mica, marble dust, and chalk, applied to raw or clear-primed linen. These materials are chosen for their spiritual symbolism, scientific properties, and historical depth. The result is not just a painting, but a living vessel of attunement.
Ise holds a BA in Studio Art from Pomona College and is currently completing her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in London. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Biennial of Macau (2021), and is held in private collections throughout the United States and the Caribbean. She is one of the core founders of Static Arts Collective, a non-profit art collecive based in New York.
Curriculum Vitae
Education
2024–2025: MA Fine Art, Royal College of Art, London
2023 – 2024: Business Management, Cornell University, New York, USA
2017 – 2021: BA Studio Art, Pomona College, California, USA
Group Exhibitions
2025 – Ancestral Utopias, The Hanger, London, UK
2025 – Works on Paper, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2024 – Tiny Works, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2021 – Now We Must Depart Again, Chan Gallery, CA, USA
2021 – Kindling, Chan Gallery, CA, 2021
2021 – Artfem, Biennial of Macau, Macau, China
Residencies
2025 – Teaching Residency in collaboration of University of Gloucestershire, Forest of Dean, UK
2023 – 2024 – Golden Web Residency, Algarve, Portugal
Awards
2021 - The Matthew Klopfleisch Prize in Art, Pomona College
Interviews/Press
2024 - Body Mapping with Ise Sharp, And the Sun, New York, NY, USA
2020 - Voices on Silence, Jamaican Observer, Kingston, Jamaica