Sharon McGauley

Sharon McGauley, an internationally collected artist, has earned multiple grants and a residencies. Her richly layered, evocative oil paintings are found in museums, galleries and private collections worldwide. Her landscape work is grounded deeply in a sense of place, and captures the beauty of a broad range of subjects, each one defined by shifting, simple palettes and a love of big spaces and subtle tones. Similarly, her charming, vibrant portraits capture the essence and personality of a wide variety of people, both real and imagined.

She lives in Portland, Maine and spends a lot of time in her family home on Cape Cod.

Her work has shown in numerous solo and juried shows across the country, and has been featured in a solo show at the Key West Custom House Museum. McGauley paintings can be found in prestigious collections in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan.

Artist’s Statement

Land and seascape paintings are, for me, about capturing a sense of place.

The experience of solitude is the starting point; the sense of being alone and engulfed by the landscape is one I frequently seek out. I am especially drawn to places where the sea meets the sky in such a way that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

Painting portraits is a similarly immersive experience, but about capturing the essence of a person - their charm, often, or some unique part of their personality - and I often wonder where they end and my imagination begins. Portraits are a collaboration with the people I am painting, and landscapes are a collaboration with the world around me.