When I’m in front of empty canvas, I have led up to that blank white canvas for probably at least ten days, all storing up. It seems to be one reaches at a given moment the point where the creative imaging is poised and ready to flow out. That means for me that I’m in a state of being receptive and creative at the same time. Before starting it’s like the eye of the storm: it’s quiet but there’s some kind of momentary feeling of almost exploding inside, like it needs to come out.  And I think that’s really why—at least for me—that’s why I paint. 

Sheila Isham, in “Sheila Isham,” directed and edited by Luc Cote, 1984

Sheila Eaton Isham (b. 1927, New York City) is an American artist whose color abstractions draw on a wide range of cultural formations—from twentieth-century European avant-garde approaches to Washington Color School techniques; from ancient Chinese calligraphy, philosophy, and poetry, to Haitian animism and modes of Hindu and Buddhist tantric practices. While seemingly random, this arc of influences follows the trajectory of Isham’s journeys abroad accompanying her husband, Heyward Isham, a career Foreign Service officer (later Ambassador to Haiti), first to Berlin, then to Moscow, Washington, D.C.,  Hong Kong, Paris, Haiti, finally settling in Sagaponack, New York. In India and then in New York, Isham sought out the spiritual practices of Siddha Yoga with gurus Swami Muktananda and Gurumayi Chidvilasandanda, whose teachings further informed her aesthetic vision.

Early instruction began at the University of Geneva (1948–1949) and continued at Bryn Mawr College from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1950. Moving to Berlin with her husband who had been appointed to the American Mission there, she became the first American citizen to be accepted at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, where for the next four years (1950–1954) she received instruction from several artists of the Die Brücke group, among them Max Pechstein and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. When her husband was assigned to the United States Embassy in Moscow in 1955, she moved with him, gaining exposure to the characteristic urban landscape over the next two years. She also was able to obtain rare access to the diplomat George Costakis’s collection of Russian avant-garde artists, including works by Kasimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, and Marc Chagall. Returning to the United States in 1957 when her husband returned to the State Department, Isham spent the next five years creating artwork in Washington, D.C. and at the Pratt Graphic Center in New York. It was during this period that Isham gained exposure to contemporary trends in American art, which catalyzed for her new techniques and procedures. In 1962, Heyward Isham was assigned to the U. S. Consulate General in Hong Kong. There Isham studied calligraphy with the maser Feng Kang-Ho, a hugely influential source that she would mine for her evolving visual vocabulary. Returning to Washington, D.C. in 1965, Isham’s work was acquired by major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (formerly, the National Museum of American Art). Several one-person exhibitions followed. Moving to Paris in 1971, when Heyward Isham was appointed acting chief of the American delegation to the Paris peace talks, Isham continued to work, exhibiting at the Galerie Darthea Speyer. Her light-filled abstractions took a turn toward representation under the influence of Haitian animistic and spirit forms, when, in 1974, her husband was made ambassador to Haiti. Returning once again to Washington, D.C. in 1977, at the time her husband was appointed Director of the Bureau of Counterterrorism, by 1978, the family had settled in Sagaponack, New York. Several years later, in 1982, Isham’s own spiritual proclivities were enhanced through a six-week course of study of Siddha Yoga in India, which interpenetrated her artistic practice. Isham’s paintings, prints, and collages conflate an extraordinary repertoire of images and ideas built around her global sojourns, which she has worked out in series after series of expressive, chromatic-filled canvases that to this day link elements across time and cultures in revelatory works of light and surface activation.

Isham has had one-person exhibitions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (formerly the National Museum of American Art), Washington, D.C. (1961); the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1974); the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y. (1974; 1981); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Miami, Florida (1977); the Museum of Modern Art, New Orleans, Louisiana (1997); Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. (1981); the Georgia Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia (1993); the Russian Museum, Marble Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia (1998); Russian State Museum, St. Michaels Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia (2004); and the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (2005).

Her work is held in major public and private collections, including Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia, Charlottesville; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Katzen Art Center, American University, Washington, D.C.; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York; Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center Art Collection, Buffalo, New York; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. 

Patricia L Lewy