Art history often inspires my work. The still lifes from the series Vanitas are descendants of Dutch painting, with a personal twist. I am a film-based, darkroom-based photographer, best known for alternative-process prints, but I have also recently fallen in love with SX-70 Polaroid.

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My painting is a influenced by the power of nature. I paint first with water colors, then with encaustic paint, layers of hot beeswax, pigment and resin. I coerce it onto paintings as a hot, drippy, excitable mess. It changes quickly from a molten liquid to hard, solid matter. Heat is used throughout the process, especially to fuse layers of wax together. Encaustic painting is an alchemical process of extreme versatility. It is both additive and subtractive. It can be painted, sculpted, or moulded. Between the layers the process is quite unpredictable. 

Painting is a joyful practice for me. I delight in color, texture, design, and decisive mark-making.
My paintings are colorful, bold and energetic. I prefer to paint from direct observation because there is a surprise element in the immediate response to and discovery of the subject. Particularly when painting en plein air (outdoors, on site) or from a still life.

I got hooked on fine art photography, the first night I spent in the darkroom printing my first black and white image.  It was like falling down a rabbit hole. There I was in Wonderland.

Photography is a medium that allows an artist nearly unlimited ways to express herself. I treasure the fact that I can make all kinds of images, many taken right from my imagination. The list includes blurry out-of-focus “street” images, staged doll scenarios, mysterious night shots, quiet observations of everyday life, digital composites and most recently, dreamy encaustic images. My work has evolved from the darkroom, to the computer and recently back to hands on play with alternative processes. Photography, for me, almost always involves an exploration, a journey on which I continue to explore my imagination and ideas. My most recent work is inspired by the magic and lore of fairy tales, the timeless stories that continue to fascinate.

I've been a printmaker for more than 22 years. My first prints were silkscreens. Today I specialize in multiple plate etchings. For the most part my etchings tell the story of my growing up in a Latino household. Today, I'm still telling that story and I also have time to work on a series of etchings on comical dogs. My web sites are: xavierviramontes.com & mesart.com/xviramontes

In my photography I try to find a way of seeing that cuts to the essential core of the subject, be it a solitary tree, a crowded sidewalk or a simple portrait.

As an artist, I attempt to put on paper, those things that interest me. I choose from within my space-a path from a morning's walk, a vegetable or a fruit from the market, flowers, weeds, trees, animals, a rock or a flowing creek. I transcribe these forms with pencil or charcoal, or a needle on copper or zinc in etched or drypoint line.

I often start with a figurative painting or a portrait. Then I adapt to the particular situation by subverting the picture plane in a variety of ways. Usually I either contract or expand the depicted space using one or more floating, intruding, or incongruous objects or subjects. My aim is to develop the classic genre of figurative work or portraiture into something more psychologically expressive and amusing. I chiefly work in pastel, oil pastel, or watercolor.

My photography draws from my background as a director and lighting designer for theatre. I create mixed scale scenarios, using the disorientation that results from these surreal scenes to draw attention to the beauty and power of everyday objects and daily interactions. I encourage people to see things that they might otherwise overlook. The fantasy of being tiny in a giant environment is universally compelling. Whether it is interpreted playfully, politically or spiritually, we have all had some experience of feeling miniscule compared to our surroundings or our challenges. I have exhibited this series since 1996, when I made my first nerve-racking public appearances on the walls of San Francisco coffee shops. Since 2000, I have been a full time artist, showing at top juried art festivals around the country, and around the world via the web, and I published my first book, “Overlooked Undertakings” in 2009. I feel passionately about creating community, and building bridges between people, so when my pictures spark a conversation, or evoke a shared smile I feel tremendous delight. My work has been published, collected and commissioned internationally. I live and work in my native San Francisco Bay Area.

For almost three decades Sharon Steuer has pioneered the merging of traditional and digital art forms. Sharon's recent work weaves together her oil paintings, drawings, digital paintings, photographs, and personal artifacts to explore and reflect fragmented memory. Awards for her artwork include the national Faber Birren Color Award, a Windsor Newton Painting award, and a Artist Fellowship Grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Her studio is in the 60-artist building Workspace Limited, studio 14a, 2150 Folsom Street (between 17th and 18th).

Sharon is also is an author who teaches how to use digital tools to create artwork in books (The Adobe Illustrator WOW! Books, Creative Thinking in Photoshop), videos (lynda.com/SharonSteuer), and as a regular contributor CreativePro.com.