sharon moody

American, b. 1951

Sharon Moody is a contemporary realist painter whose work focuses on still life and illusionism. Her current series depicts vintage comic books in a trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) style. She arranges her subjects to focus on the excitement and anticipation of reading, capturing a moment in time as the pages turn. The subject matter celebrates mass-produced consumer products and references the Pop art roots of these works; meticulous rendering nods to Photorealism. Trompe l’oeil paintings attempt to deceive the viewer into believing that they are seeing a real three-dimensional object instead of a two-dimensional painting. For that reason, trompe l'oeil painters often depict subject matter that is playful or amusing, and it is in this vein that Moody explores objects associated with entertainment; the fragility of paper objects alludes to the passage of time.

A career-long interest in realism has most recently focused on trompe l'oeil paintings of objects from popular culture. “Popular culture, including entertainment, leisure activities, games, indulgent foods and other reflections of our pleasure-seeking society, is arguably our country’s largest export today,” she says. Her work was included in recent museum surveys of contemporary realism, such as Fort Wayne Museum of Art’s Contemporary Realism Biennial and the traveling exhibition Photorealism Revisited, which was seen at the Butler Art Institute and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Her work was included in the first gallery survey exhibition of photorealism in Canada, Galerie de Bellefueill’s Beyond Realism. Louis Meisel’s latest book, Photorealism in the Digital Age (2013), included her work in the section “Promising Artists.” In New York she has exhibited at Meisel Gallery and Bernarducci Gallery. On the west coast, her work is represented by Scott Richards Fine Art in San Francisco.

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