Sharon Whyte - Edinburgh based printmaker and painter

Biography
Born in 1972, Sharon Whyte studied Fine Art and English Literature at Canterbury Christ Church University, graduating in 1994 with a BA (Hons) in both subjects, specialising in painting and printmaking. Moving back to her hometown of Edinburgh after graduation, she focused initially on embarking on a career as an artist, gaining commissions and private sales, before travelling and working as a web editor and copywriter. In 2003 she made the decision to leave employment and return to art practice and has since exhibited and sold work whilst exploring new mediums and developing her career. She rents a studio in Portobello, near Edinburgh, from Out of the Blue Arts and Education Trust and is a member of Edinburgh Printmakers and the Society of Scottish Artists.

Artist’s Statement
My practice is focused around my interest in the history of unusual types of performance and involves periods of research, searching archives and integrating ephemera from archives of theatre, magic and circus history directly into the work. I enjoy the process of presenting old and sometimes rarely seen material in a new context and mixing in elements of my own design. While my primary medium is screenprinting, I also use pencil, watercolour, gouache and collage to create images from source material and my own sketchbooks and plan to experiment with 3D work and using film and photographic processes.

I am interested in popular culture and in particular how the distance of time affects popular culture and its artefacts – archives of the ephemera of popular and vernacular culture are therefore the ideal starting point for this exploration; I wish to explore whether these items, simply by their very preservation and their status as ‘historical’ have been imbued with qualities normally associated with ‘high’ culture, and why something that is often derided in its contemporary setting is given the accolade of preservation, thus altering its supposed ‘throwaway’ nature. This incongruity I feel is worthy of investigation through adding yet another layer to the life of the object and its subject by turning it into art and giving it a new audience.

My most recently completed project was a series of screenprints based around the theme of ‘learned’ animals (an unusual form of popular magical entertainment in the 18th and 19th centuries) utilising images and text from playbills, reviews, posters, songs and books.

Using material from archives is now one of my primary objectives as an artist. It is my aim to cultivate this objective through mutually beneficial interaction with stewards of archival material where possible, and through my own interest in particular collections and themes.

I am currently working on a news series exploring the history and lives of women in the conjuring arts, using photographs and ephemera from the archives of The Magic Circle and other private collections. I have also been researching and writing a book on the same subject since 2008.