Sharon Louden bio

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sharon louden

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1964
Lives and works in New York City
Studied at the Atlanta College of Art (1982-85); School of the Art Institute of Chicago (B.F.A., 1988); and Yale University School of Art (M.F.A., 1991)

Artist's statement:
My work is about giving character to individual gestures through the illusion of movement, placement, and direction of marks. I consider these forms "creatures" with whom I have an ongoing dialogue. They come from a long history of development that originated from simple lines observed in bodies in motion and glimpses of curious attitudes of posture. Manipulating these representational lines over time has turned them into forms that constantly evolve. I am interested in placing these figures within a frame or a specific space and having them come alive as individual, humorous, elegant entities unto themselves. My work is a continual investigation into the many characteristics that lie within these forms. The experience of transforming these characters into the medium of lithography was a great challenge for me because of the way I work. Usually, in the process of drawing, I edit through several hundred drawings to get to a final selection of between five and twenty drawings in a series. With lithography, I had to deal with a few plates instead of many sheets of paper. I no longer had the luxury of editing from sheet to sheet; instead, I was required to make specific choices immediately. Because of this different type of spontaneity, I consider these prints to be some of my most unique drawings.

Sharon Louden's 1999 exhibitions include:
Sharon Louden: "Agents," an installation at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, and Vanishing Point, a group exhibition at the Cynthia Broan Gallery, New York. Her sculptural work is also featured at the Connemara Conservancy Foundation in the Dallas/Fort Worth area through May 9, 1999.
Solo exhibitions within the past three years have included ones at the Thomas Healy Gallery, New York; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Works on Paper, Inc., Los Angeles; and the Islip Art Museum, East Islip, New York. Other recent group exhibitions include the 1998 Art on Paper exhibition at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina Greensboro, as well as exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; the Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; and Harvard University's Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Louden's work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Arkansas Arts Center.