About
Sheila Isham
Born in 1927, Sheila Isham is a painter and book artist whose work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution, the Corcoran Gallery, the Albright Knox Art Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and many other museums and galleries.
After graduating Bryn Mawr, she accompanied her husband, a career diplomat, to his posting in Berlin. There, Isham enrolled in the Hochschule für Bildende Kunste, where she studied with Abstract Expressionists who had survived the Nazi era. During her husband's appointment in China, from 1962 to 1965, Isham studied Tang Dynasty calligraphy with a master. Upon her return to the United States she began experimenting with ways to combine the esthetic of the brush stroke with contemporary techniques and forms.
Further travel influenced her work as well: the Ishams lived in Russia, Vietnam, Haiti, and India. Clearly, each culture flavored her work. Besides painting on canvas, Isham has created portfolios of prints and a number of artist's books.
Contact the Artist
As written by Edward F. Fry
Sheila Isham has lived for extensive periods of time in Russia (1955 - 1957); Hong Kong (1962 - 1965); Paris (1971 - 1973); and Haiti (1974 - 1977), working as an artist and exhibiting: Hong Kong, Japan and Paris, teaching at the Chinese University in Hong Kong and giving workshops and lectures both with U.S.I.A. and independently in Southeast Asia, Australia and India, as well as cities in Europe and the United States.
Sheila Isham’s work is included in the major museum and collections of this country and many abroad. She has had over twenty one-person exhibitions in well known galleries, two traveling shows: one in Latin and South America in 1978 - 1979 and one in 1981 – Smithsonian Institution and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.
These paintings seem to exist outside history, in a uniquely personal realm. Their history, however, is that of an interpretation of personal with cultural and artistic history which is more complex than that underlying most contemporary painting. Isham’s art is based on the fusion of a high romantic approach to scale, color and light, with a draughtsmanship which is simultaneously Western and Oriental and thus also both masculine and feminine.