I’m an abstract painter because I love what is elemental and essential. I’m interested in creating a realm of mystery, surprise, serenity, and beauty. I use color, either oil or acrylic paint, for its feeling tone, each hue having a distinct emotional component, and line for its rhythmic possibilities and the awareness of gravity to indicate a possible intention, as in a “going toward.” I want to create a sense that there is in a work a “presence” that has its own life in a pictorial space that seems, however flat, empty and monochromatic, “full.”

Virginia Sharkey

VIRGINIA SHARKEY is an abstract painter who has lived on the Mendocino Coast for 30 years. Before moving to the coast, she lived inland on a hundred acres near Hopland on the (former sheep) McNab Ranch, relocating from an 11 year stint in her studios on the Lower East Side waterfront of Manhattan, interrupted for a while by having a studio on Martha’s Vineyard and in a castle in the Italian Alps. She was raised in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Her formal education was at Vassar College where her mentor was the social surrealist/realist Alton Pickens. Her informal education was in the motley cultural hotbed of New York City.

Second Saturday Gallery Reception:

October 14, 5pm-8pm

Free admission

Mendocino Art Center hosts a free Second Saturday Artists Reception each month. Enjoy snacks and wine, and meet the exhibiting artists.