Wendy Sharpe (b.1960, Sydney) is a major Australian figurative artist who divides her time between living and working in her two studios in Sydney and Paris. Sharpe is known for her confident, exuberant figurative and narrative style paintings which depict love, passion and daily life. Sharpe draws with paint – her sensuous use of the medium brings to life images drawn from her direct experiences and an intuitive imagination.
Sharpe attended the Seaforth Technical College in the late 1970s before completing a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts) at the City Art Institute, Sydney in 1982. In the mid-1980s the artist completed further studies at the Sydney Institute of Education (Graduate Diploma of Education (Art)) and the City Art Institute (Graduate Diploma of Professional Art). Between 1991-92 Sharpe studied for a MA (Fine Arts) at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW.
The artist’s exhibiting career began in 1985, the same year she was hung as a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales with a large gouache on paper, The crack up. The following year Sharpe won the Sulman (jointly with artist Nigel Thomson) with her large triptych, Black sun – morning to night. Since that time the artist has continued to exhibit her work extensively both in Australia and abroad.
In 2011 Sharpe’s work was the subject of a major retrospective survey Wendy Sharpe: The Imagined Life curated by the S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney. More recently, her work has been curated in numerous museum shows including Painting for Antarctica: Wendy Sharpe and Bernard Ollis Follow Shackleton, Australian National Maritime, Sydney (2015); Salient – Contemporary Artists at the Western Front, New England Regional Gallery, NSW and travelling (2018-2020); and Tradition and Transformation II: Taiwan-Australian International Watercolour Exhibition, Dadun Cultural Centre, Taichung City, Taiwan (2020).
The recipient of many awards, Sharpe won the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1996 with her work, Self-portrait – as Diana of Erskineville. The year prior to winning the Archibald, Sharpe received The Portia Geach Memorial Prize which she was to win again later in 2003. More recently, in 2014 Sharpe won the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing in Sydney and in 2019 the Calleen Art Award at Cowra Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales. In 1999 Sharpe was appointed as an Australian Official War Artist through the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, and recorded Australian Defence Force operations in Dili, East Timor.
The artist’s work is represented in major institutional collections including Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Australian War Memorial, Canberra; National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; Australian Embassy, Paris, France; and State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.
Image: Wendy Sharpe, The beginning, 2025, oil and acrylic on linen, 150 x 200 cm
