Miami— May 9, 2022 — Shara Hughes (b. 1981, Atlanta, GA) is a Brooklyn-based artist making her mark in the contemporary art world with rich and colorful fantastical paintings. Hughes has mesmerized viewers, gained the attention of national and international curators, and has been consistently included in major museum exhibitions, such as the Whitney Biennial in 2017, her work is part of important institutional collections including Metropolitan Museum of Art, and earlier this year reached a new record of $2,759,501 at Sotheby’s London.

Hughes’s large-scale paintings are made with an exuberant palette that embodies the lusciousness of her recurring subjects: fantastical landscapes and alien-like flora and fauna. Shara stated: “I’m really trying actively to surprise myself every time I make a new painting.” She makes this evident through a constant exploration of her vivid imagination as well as experimentation of techniques in her practice, working with oil, enamel, acrylic, and spray paint. To achieve her multi-textured canvases, Hughes often mixes pigments directly on the surface, resulting in rich and vibrant colors in lush layered compositions.

Hughes earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and attended the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine. Her work has been shown at important national and international cultural organizations such as the FLAG Art Foundation, New York City (2022); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2021-2022); the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2021); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2021); Garden Museum, London (2021); Aspen Museum of Art (2021); Dallas Art Museum (2019); MASS MoCA, North Adams (2018); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2015). Furthermore, her work belongs to many prominent museum collections, including the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; the Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; the Jorge M. Perez Collection, Miami, FL; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, GA; the M Woods Museum, Beijing, China; the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, TX; the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; the Si Shang Art Museum, Beijing, China; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY; among others.

For more information on Shara Hughes click here.

Photo: Shara Hughes in her Brooklyn studio by Daniel Dorsa courtesy of Galerie Magazine