About Sharon Reeber

Informed by intense study of the European, Asian, and American painting traditions Reeber produces works of striking imagery and profound spiritual depth. She is now breaking new ground by exploring contemporary visual ideas with the ancient art form of painting on silk.  

Landscape  imagery often forms the starting point for Reeber’s poetic paintings characterized by vivid use of color and a magical atmosphere.  Her choice of materials is truly engaging.   In a search for a more expressive and vibrant medium she discovered French-manufactured dyes which,  when applied to fine Chinese silk, produce hues of brilliant luminosity. This medium perfectly suits her love  of color and expressive gesture, and the resulting images dance and shimmer in the light.

Best known for her large-scale paintings on silk, she also works in watercolor and lithography.    Her work has been exhibited and collected across the U.S. and overseas, and is featured in the book The Best of Silkpainting (North Light Press, 1997).

Reeber grew up in Westchester County, New York and first studied art in New York City.  She went on to study painting, art history, and languages at Tufts University and at the Eberhard-Karls University in Tuebingen, Germany.  She extended her residency in Europe for several years, working, studying and exhibiting her art. During her travels in the Far East she was  invited to Tokyo  and  granted access to one of the major private collections of historical Japanese screen paintings to study the design of traditional Japanese painting on silk. 

After many years of study and experimentation, and a journey that has taken her from the medieval cathedrals of Europe to Japanese Shinto temples and back to the United States, Sharon Reeber creates paintings in which the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.

In addition to studio work, Reeber is on the faculty of Benedictine College (Atchison, Kansas).  She and her husband, the author Frederick Chiaventone, now live with their children near Kansas City, Missouri.

Sharon Reeber is a featured artist on the following websites:

http://www.presentmagazine.com/gallery.php

http://www.silkpainters-guild.co.uk/  (international exhibit)

http://www.dharmatrading.com/featured/

               photo by Sam Romerstein