Mr Peter Sharp

Peter Sharp’s research over thirty years years has consistently been about the visual exploration and understanding of nature's systems through the lens of abstraction.

His art covers a wide range of media including painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking and video. 

“Sharp’s paintings, with their fluid lines and deep colours, worked surfaces and biomorphic forms, are abstractions of landscape. Or, more precisely, they are records of Sharp’s reactions to the landscape. Visual interpretations that serve witness to his process.” (Andrew Frost, “Just Enough”, Peter Sharp: Will to Form, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, 2012, p13)

“I tend to fall in love with a subject, then filter it through different media… My primary media would be drawing, as without that initial interrogation of the landscape I’d be lost! Drawing tends to be less ego-drive, more open…” (Peter Sharp, “Not the Way Home: Desert Paintings from 13 Artists”, Artist Profile, Issue 18, 2012, p56-57)

Sharp completed a Bachelor of Art Education at City Art Institute, Sydney in 1987 before graduating with a Masters of Fine Art at the University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts in 1992. From 1989-1999, Sharp held regular solo exhibitions at Coventry Gallery, Sydney. In 1996, Sharp's work was acquired by Grafton Regional Gallery as part of the Jacaranda Drawing Prize and in the following year was granted a residency at the Cite’ des Arts Internationale, Paris, where he collaborated with French printmakers to make a series of lithographs and etchings. In 1999, he was invited to exhibit at Kunstraum 34 in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2001, Sharp participated in the award winning television documentary Two-Thirds Sky, which culminated in an exhibition of the same title held at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre. His paintings have been exhibited in the Wynne Prize (1996, 2003), the Sulman Prize (1998, 2008) and the Dobell Prize for Drawing (2009, 2010) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2009, Sharp was invited to be part of the Taronga Zoo Artist-in-Residence program which was featured on the ABC.

In 2011, Artist Profile magazine sponsored a group of 13 artists including Peter Sharp to travel to Fowler's Gap in far western NSW and respond to their surrounding landscape in a body of work. Curated by Owen Craven and in association with Winsor & Newton, 'Not the Way Home', an exhibition of the artists' work was exhibited at S.H Ervin Gallery, The National Trust, NERAM, and Broken Hill City Art Gallery in 2012.

Sharp has exhibited widely in group exhibitions including: Insight Radical: Where Science Meets Art at Griffin Gallery, London (2013), Personal Space: Contemporary Chinese and Australian Prints, Manly Art Gallery and Museum, Sydney (2011), Artist Artists, Benalla Art Gallery, Victoria (2011), Silk and Sand: Chinese and Australian Prints, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, Sydney; The Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China (2008) and Contemporaneous: Australian Contemporary Painting 1, Wangaratta Art Gallery, Victoria (2008). Sharp was selected for the Salon des Refuses at the S. H. Ervin Gallery, The National Trust in 2013 and in 2014. 

In 2012, Sharp held his first survey at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre titled 'Peter Sharp: Will to Form', curated by Liz Nowell and featured works from over a 15 year period. This survey also culminated in the publication 'Peter Sharp: Will to Form', a 120 page fully illustrated hardback catalogue, which includes essays by Andrew Frost and Gillian Serisier.

In November 2014, Sharp was selected for the inaugural Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial, titled "Drawing Out" at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, curated by Anne Ryan.

In 2024 Sharp was awarded the Hornsby Painting prize.

In 2025 Sharp was selected for the prestigious Josef and Anni Albers foundation residency, in Connecticut , USA.

Sharp’s work is held in many significant public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia, The Holmes a Court Collection, Artbank, The Macquarie Group Collection, New England Regional Art Museum, St Vincent's Hospital, Sports & Entertainment LTD and private collections in Australia, United Kingdom and overseas. Peter Sharp lives and works in Sydney, Australia.

Student HDR Completions and Topics

2008 Anthony O'Carroll - The history of Matter Painting in Australia, MFA

2008 Juliana O'Dean - The Materiality of Stone, MFA

2009 Simon Taylor - Articulating the Grid, MFA

2010 Carmel Byrne - Above the Grid: Multiple Perspectives in Landscape, MFA

2010 Fiona Edmonds - Body of Water, MFA

2010 Peter Laris - Geometric Urban Landscape, MFA

2010 Damian Moss - Subjectivity and Authorship: Surface and Materiality in Painting and Drawing, MFA

2010 Stuart Watters - The Shape of Language, MFA

2011 Paul Du Mouli - Enter the Network, MFA   

2011 Cyndi Freeman - A Requiem for Handwriting, MFA

2011 Kieran McInnes - An investigation of European pictorial conventions with reference to contemporary Australian landscape painting, MFA

2011 Paul Williams  - The Studio of the Painter: Process and Play, MFA

2014 Yiwon Park - Unknown Familiar story of Us: Personal Mythologies, MFA

2015 Paul Davies - Pastiche; A lens to view the present, MFA

2015 Gillan Lavery - Home Remains, MFA

2015 Kate Swinson - Ephemeral Habitats built from the memory of childhood, MFA

2015 Jennie Holtsbaum- Traces of Wilderness, MFA

2015 Shannon Sheppard-Sims - MONSTER ISLAND: A tale of contemporary Australian heterosexual masculinity and its descent from the spectre of colonial convict history, PhD

2015 Sarah Park - Experimental & Visual explorations into altering the perception and stigma of Scars, MFA

2016 Wendy Stokes - The Nympheas: retraced, re-membered; as lived encounter, MFA

2017 Marikat Santiago - Halo Halo - A collection of short stories, MFA

2018 Rachel Honnery - Absolute kippleization and The Plastosystem, MFA

2019 Carol Hudson - Intertidal, MFA

2021 Nicole Kelly - Unsettling Landscape in Australia, MFA

2025 Tia Madden - The UNCODE, Meaning at the intersection of drawing and writing, MFA

2026 Sarah Eddowes - Noodle Soup, Exposing a dialogue between virtual and physical tactile experience in 3D visualisation and sculpture, PhD