Donna Sharam, also known as the “Color Queen,” grew up in the Australian bush near Coonabarabran, enjoying horse riding and swimming in a local creek. When she turned 18 years old she moved from the country to Sydney to study fashion design at the Sydney College of the Arts, igniting her creativity.
READ MORE +READ LESS -
Working in the fashion industry as a textile designer took her on trips to China and Hong Kong. Soon after, however, she would find new direction in her life after marrying and having three children. Her new outlook on life motivated her to earn a post-graduate in teaching in addition to her bachelor of arts in design and textiles. She believed teaching would fit in with raising children, but her creativity once again flourished and her career took another turn when she successfully began designing and selling house wares.
Her path to becoming a professional artist took its final step when her family moved to Byron Bay in Northern New South Wales. The rolling hills and rainforests mixed with its people encouraged her to try painting in 2005. In the following decade, she sold more than 700 original works.
Ever since she was a young girl, Sharam says she has always loved color, from dressing up in multicolored outfits to dying her hair purple. This was only furthered by her career in the fashion industry, and now it has manifested in her art. She even claims that she is addicted to color; of all of the colors she uses, red is her favorite.
Her expressionistic artwork features exaggerated shapes and vibrant scenes of trees and animals, using everything from board and house paints to pens in her desire to create textures.
She points to influences from artists such as Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso and Brett Whiteley as well as Australian Indigenous art. These influences shine through in artwork full of distorted geometric shapes, vibrant colors and positive energy. She says the overwhelming sentiment of her art is her “love of life.”
Sharam paints with joy and passion, combining color and texture on the canvas to create works that are unique and joyful in style and execution. She is inspired by her work hanging in the homes of her collectors, loving that her art can bring them joy, smiles, imagination and color into their lives.
“I think the brush merely tints the canvas, it is imagination that produces art.”
She believes art is for everyone, finding wisdom from the artist and architect Friedensreuch Hundertwasser, who said: “Art must regain its universal function for all and not be just a fashionable business for insiders.”
Sharam has been featured on the TV show “Put Some Colour In Your Life,” which features artists from Australia and around the world.
