Mr Peter Sharp

Peter Sharp’s research over twenty five years has consistently been about the visual exploration and understanding of how nature works and fits together through the lense of abstraction.

His art covers a wide range of media including painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking and video. 

“Sharp’s paintings, with their fluid lines and deep colours, worked surfaces and biomorphic forms, are abstractions of landscape. Or, more precisely, they are records of Sharp’s reactions to the landscape. Visual interpretations that serve witness to his process.” (Andrew Frost, “Just Enough”, Peter Sharp: Will to Form, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, 2012, p13)

“I tend to fall in love with a subject, then filter it through different media… My primary media would be drawing, as without that initial interrogation of the landscape I’d be lost! Drawing tends to be less ego-drive, more open…” (Peter Sharp, “Not the Way Home: Desert Paintings from 13 Artists”, Artist Profile, Issue 18, 2012, p56-57)

Sharp completed a Bachelor of Art Education at City Art Institute, Sydney in 1987 before graduating with a Masters of Fine Art at the University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts in 1992. From 1989-1999, Sharp held regular solo exhibitions at Coventry Gallery, Sydney. In 1996, Sharp's work was acquired by Grafton Regional Gallery as part of the Jacaranda Drawing Prize and in the following year was granted a residency at the Cite’ des Arts Internationale, Paris, where he collaborated with French printmakers to make a series of lithographs and etchings. In 1999, he was invited to exhibit at Kunstraum 34 in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2001, Sharp participated in the award winning television documentary Two-Thirds Sky, which culminated in an exhibition of the same title held at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre. His paintings have been exhibited in the Wynne Prize (1996, 2003), the Sulman Prize (1998, 2008) and the Dobell Prize for Drawing (2009, 2010) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2009, Sharp was invited to be part of the Taronga Zoo Artist-in-Residence program which was featured on the ABC.

In 2011, Artist Profile magazine sponsored a group of 13 artists including Peter Sharp to travel to Fowler's Gap in far western NSW and respond to their surrounding landscape in a body of work. Curated by Owen Craven and in association with Winsor & Newton, 'Not the Way Home', an exhibition of the artists' work was exhibited at S.H Ervin Gallery, The National Trust, NERAM, and Broken Hill City Art Gallery in 2012.

Sharp has exhibited widely in group exhibitions including: Insight Radical: Where Science Meets Art at Griffin Gallery, London (2013), Personal Space: Contemporary Chinese and Australian Prints, Manly Art Gallery and Museum, Sydney (2011), Artist Artists, Benalla Art Gallery, Victoria (2011), Silk and Sand: Chinese and Australian Prints, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, Sydney; The Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China (2008) and Contemporaneous: Australian Contemporary Painting 1, Wangaratta Art Gallery, Victoria (2008). Sharp was selected for the Salon des Refuses at the S. H. Ervin Gallery, The National Trust in 2013 and in 2014. 

In 2012, Sharp held his first survey at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre titled 'Peter Sharp: Will to Form', curated by Liz Nowell and featured works from over a 15 year period. This survey also culminated in the publication 'Peter Sharp: Will to Form', a 120 page fully illustrated hardback catalogue, which includes essays by Andrew Frost and Gillian Serisier.

In November 2014, Sharp was selected for the inaugural Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial, titled "Drawing Out" at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, curated by Anne Ryan.

Sharp’s work is held in many significant public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia, The Holmes a Court Collection, Artbank, The Macquarie Group Collection, New England Regional Art Museum, St Vincent's Hospital, Sports & Entertainment LTD and private collections in Australia, United Kingdom and overseas. Peter Sharp lives and works in Sydney, Australia.

Student HDR Completions and Topics

2008      Anthony O'Carroll           The history of Matter Painting in Australia                                                            MFA

              Juliana O'Dean               The Materiality of Stone                                                                                        MFA

2009      Simon Taylor                   Articulating the Grid                                                                                              MFA

2010      Carmel Byrne                 Above the Grid: Multiple Perspectives in Landscape                                           MFA

              Fiona Edmonds              Body of Water                                                                                                       MFA

              Peter Laris                      Geometric Urban Landscape                                                                                MFA

              Damian Moss                 Subjectivity and Authorship: Surface and Materiality in Painting and Drawing    MFA

              Stuart Watters                The Shape of Language                                                                                        MFA

 2011     Paul Du Moulin               Enter the Network                                                                                                 MFA   

              Cyndi Freeman               A Requiem for Handwriting                                                                                   MFA

              Kieran McInnes              An investigation of European pictorial conventions with reference to

                                                     contemporary Australian landscape painting                                                        MFA

              Paul Williams                 The Studio of the Painter: Process and Play                                                          MFA

2014      Yiwon Park                     Unknown Familiar story of Us: Personal Mythologies                                           MFA

2015      Paul Davies                    Pastiche; A lense to view the present                                                                    MFA

              Gillan Lavery                  Home Remains                                                                                                       MFA

              Kate Swinson                 Ephemeral Habitats built from the memory of childhood                                      MFA

              Jennie Holtsbaum          Traces of Wilderness                                                                                              MFA

              Shannon Sheppard-Sims     MONSTER ISLAND: A tale of contemporary Australian heterosexual

                                                     masculinity and its descent from the spectre of colonial convict history              PhD

              Sarah Park                     Experimental & Visual explorations into altering the perception and stigma of

                                                     Scars                                                                                                                      MFA

2016      Wendy Stokes                The Nympheas: retraced, re-membered; as lived encounter                                MFA

2017      Marikat Santiago            Halo Halo - A collection of short stories                                                                MFA

2018      Rachel Honnery              absolute kippleization and The Plastosystem                                                       MFA

2019      Carol Hudson                 Intertidal                                                                                                                 MFA

2021      Nicole Kelly                     Unsettling Landscape in Australia                                                                         MFA