1965-

Sharon Core lives and works in Esopus, New York. She received her BFA in painting from the University of Georgia in 1987, and her MFA in photography from Yale University School of Art in 1998. Core was the recipient of the George Sakier Memorial Prize for Excellence in Photography at the Yale School of Art in 1998 and she won the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Art Grant in 2000.

The series 1606-1907 explores the subject of floral still-life painting. Similar to Core’s earlier work, the series examines the relationship of representational painting to the medium of photography. But rather than focusing on a specific artist or time period, as in the previous Thiebaud and Early American works, the 1606-1907 series references a pictorial convention within painting as a whole. Core’s sources range from the style of early Flemish painters, such as Bosschaert and Jan Brueghel, to the Modernists Odilon Redon and Fantin-Latour. The work engages time in both a sense of history and temporality. Flowers are the most temporal of objects: fragile, changeable, and short-lived, a flowerʼs bloom opens, bends, fades and falls according to degrees of light, temperature, water, and weather. Flowers have been portrayed for centuries by artists of all stripes and have an established permanence in the lexicon of art history. With an eye towards the flower in its natural state and as well as the styles of representation that attempt to order, organize, celebrate, and lament a fleeting symbol of beauty throughout history, Core has thoroughly explored the nature of the painted bouquet. As in previous work, Core made a detailed study of the manipulation of props: paint, light, and in this case, flowers. She cultivated specific types of flowers – broken viral tulips, opium poppies, heirloom roses – and worked with them and their quirks.

Since 1998, her work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad, including George Eastman House, Rochester; Grand Palais, Paris; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena; Gallery Hyundai, Seoul; White Columns, New York; James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe; and the Hermes Foundation Gallery, New York. Her work is included in major public collections such as The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Guggenheim, New York; The Zabludowicz Collection, London; Yale University Art Gallery; Princeton University Museum of Art; the Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth; and the West Collection, Philadelphia, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (Fort Worth, TX), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), MoCA Shanghai and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.