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Sharon Florin
For 25 years I have been an oil painter of the urban landscape. The older buildings and side streets of New York hold a special fascination for me as I try to capture the texture, detail and especially the light of the city. My work documents what is so familiar that you can walk by without noticing it, and yet tomorrow it may be gone.
I am a realist painter who sees the soul of the city through time. Time changes buildings, casting shadows at different hours of the day, turning concrete brick, stone and wood into patterned abstraction—if you are looking. I am intrigued by reflections, by the paradox of seemingly fixed materials in transition, depending on the sky, the sun, the moment.
As an artist, I am in love with the city’s dynamism. I record the architecture of the city not to suspend it in an amber of nostalgia but because to me history is animate, alive in these constructions, which represent an abstract order, a symmetry of dailiness.
My work is in the tradition of such painters as Hopper. As he told the story of time through the buildings of a small town, so I narrate the city of New York, each building, window and architectural ornament telling its unique tale. My passion for our architecture has only deepened over time, as we have come to realize how much the buildings of this extraordinary city are alive in our collective imagination.
Education
1973, B.A. cum laude, Adelphi University, NY
1968-1977, Art Students League, New York City
Solo Shows
2002 Treasure Room Gallery of the Interchurch
Center,
New York,
NY
2002 The Wall Gallery of John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
New York,
NY
1999 MMC Gallery, New York, NY (2-person show)
1995 Unibank Art Gallery, New York, NY
1991 Noho Gallery, New York, NY (1989, 1986, 1985, 1983, 1982)
1984 Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn, NY
Selected Group Shows
2001 Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts,
NAWA Annual
Exhibition, New York, NY (Award)
Fraser Gallery,
Washington, D.C. (Award)
2000 National Arts Club, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club
104th Annual
Exhibition, New York, NY (Award)
1999 Art Students League of New York, NY
Museum of
the City of New York, NY
1998 Hudson Waterfront Museum, Brooklyn, NY
National
Arts Club, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club,
New
York, NY (Award)
New
Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ
1997 New York Transit Museum, Brooklyn, NY
1996 SAP America Inc., curated by Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia,
PA
1995 Michael Ingbar Gallery, New York, NY (1996, 1997, 1998)
1994 Zimmerli Art Museum, NAWA Collection at
Rutgers University,New
Brunswick, NJ
Braithwaite
Fine Arts Gallery, Southern Utah University,
Cedar City,
UT (Award)
1992 Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, LA
South
Bend Art Center, South Bend, IN
Chautauqua
Institution, Chautauqua, NY
1991 The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
(Award)
1990 Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, New Castle, PA
1986 The Bronx Museum satellite gallery at
Krasdale
Foods, Inc., Bronx, NY
1984 The City Gallery, New York, NY
The
Queens Museum, New York. Curated
by Henry
Geldzhaler (Catalogue )
1983 Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York
1982 National Arts Club, Allied Artists, New York, NY
1980 Washington Square East Galleries, New York, NY
Public and Corporate Collections
Burson-Marsteller, NY; Capital RE, NY; Carter-Wallace, NY; Citizens Utilities, CT; Guy Carpenter and Company, NY; Credit Local de France, NY; Headway Corporation, NY; Jay Alit & Associates/Questor Management Company, NY; Media Masters, NY; Museum of the City of New York, NY; Public Service Company of North Carolina, Inc., NC; Risch-Darlington, NY: Trizec Hahn Office Properties, Inc., NY; Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, NJ; Zyloware Corp., NY.