about
Born and raised in Nanaimo, Sharon Reay was creating art in various media since childhood. After attending the Vancouver School of Art, she continued taking courses and workshops, as she grew her art practice and raised her children in Burnaby. In the ’80’s, she taught ceramics at the Burnaby Arts Centre for several years, before it became the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. By the early 90’s she had become the Adult Arts Programmer (in all disciplines except music), then later her position shifted to focus upon Ceramics of all ages. Her main focus has been on clay for the past 40 years, but she has often turned to other materials – mainly drawing and working with wood, when circumstances or injuries made work with clay impossible. The imagery she is most inspired by comes from children’s literature or nature and her whimsical characters most often elicit smiles from those who come across them.
artist statement
From childhood, it seems, I was destined for a life spent immersed in the arts. I went from student to artist, artist to teacher, teacher to arts administrator and now, finally, full circle back to spending my days up to my elbows in clay. With a mother who always believed that ‘busy hands were happy hands’ (and who thus supplied an endless array of materials to create with), together with a father who instilled in me a love of reading, I have seldom strayed from that artistic path. My work is a reflection of my deep love of children’s literature and the illustrators who filled with my young head with images which haunt me still. Between that and the beauty I am surrounded by, in a world filled with unique plants, animals and patterns and characters – inspiration knows no bounds.
