Wendy Sharpe

“Art is a technique of communication” – Claes Oldendurg.
Discuss this statement

An artist employs their work as a style of communication.   Artist, Wendy Sharpe has created various figurative paintings ‘Diana of Erskineville’ (1996), ‘self portrait in Florence’ (2009) and ‘Menaced by cupids (1994) which effectively communicate her ideologies with the audience.

Wendy Sharpe is viewed as a figurative painter. She uses human models to guide her rather than complete copying. She tends to avoid the compromising that can occur when trying to please the model. She chooses people that she knows in the paintings as she is able to convey how that particular person has affected her, creating her works to be more personal. Sharpe feels her art celebrates passionate emotions, imagination and freedom as she explores her own visions. She uses ‘romantic’ compositions, swirling movement, broad brushstrokes, texture and dramatic tonal contrast. Wendy feels that many of her paintings render the painter in the moment of creation, emotions visual and feelings materialized.
Wendy Sharpe’s paintings reflect a post-modernist perspective, one of Sharpe’s famous works “Dianna of Erskinevelle” (1996) is a parody of Dianna the Roman goddess of the moon and hunting. Sharpe successfully incorporates mythology as an allegorical device; she incorporates humour, parody and wit to appropriate this traditional painting of the tragic hero. The artist is highly interested with mythology and how paintings from the renaissance period commonly portrayed women naked as they were painted from a voyeuristic point of view. However Wendy has taken a feministic approach towards her version of the painting, she has created a self portrait of herself as if she were Dianna. Doing this she has changed certain conventions of the traditional work, instead of the goddess holding spears Sharpe shows herself holding paint brushes. The artist’s visual and conceptual puns, she depicts herself wearing thongs and...