Prime interview with Sharon Bruster

Artist Sharon Bruster reveals her love of making coastal inspired work

Over the coming months we will be asking some of the members of Prime Women Artists about their practice, inspirations and dreams for the future.

First up is Sharon Bruster who started the Prime Women Artists network with artist friend Maggie Cochran in 2023. 

You can find out about the network on our website HERE.

Sharon Bruster at work on Harlyn beach

How did your art journey begin? And where on the path have you reached so far?

I’ve always loved art and enjoyed visiting art galleries and exhibitions. As a youngster I used to draw all the time. Then at some point at school I was channeled down the more academic route and it was never possible back then to combine creative and non-creative subjects, so art making got pushed to one side, although I guess I dabbled in a number creative pursuits as a hobby over the years. I had a long, busy and wonderful career in the NHS but it took up all my time and head space and never left any room for me.

In 2014 I took the decision to leave work and to find out what else I might want to do in the next stage of my life. I started taking art classes – finally having the time to devote myself to creative pursuit – and benefited hugely from a number of short courses at Newlyn School of Art as well as other online courses. It was wonderful to study with practicing contemporary artists, to learn about their process and practice as well as being given the freedom and opportunity explore my own creative interests and style. I was hooked!

I then went on to take two back to back one-year courses at Newlyn which gave me an even stronger focus on developing and extending my practice.

So over a period of ten years I’ve been really taking art seriously, giving my all to it and pursuing my studies as well as my own practice development.

I love learning and exploring – this will never stop! I am lucky to have a purpose built studio and a full time commitment to art making.

What kind of artist are you and what made you choose to do what you do?

I describe myself as an inter-disciplinary artist. There are many strands to my creative practice but they are all interlinked and all driven by a single inspiration.

I have a magpie brain – always thinking, being curious, and always full of ideas. This can be a bit exhausting! But the creative joy for me comes from exploring different ways to express myself using different media, different processes. I am very process-driven. It’s the making that is most important to me. I enjoy losing myself in the process of making something and exploring the properties of the materials I use.

My practice involves painting, printmaking, photography and alternative process photography (cameraless photography), writing and drawing. I alternate between these things and sometimes they interact.

Why do you create? What does making do for you?

I create art because I simply have to! There’s a drive in me to express my fascination with the coast and to make things. Making art makes me feel good.

What lights you up and inspires you?

Living by the sea is what inspires me to make art. Walking on beaches or on the coastal path fills my head with images, sounds and scents, memories and feelings that I am inspired to make art about. My particular fascination is with the tideline and littoral space.  The patterns, shapes, textures, colours of sand and water and rock, seaweed, shells and pebbles are what catch my eye when walking and fill my camera. I love rockpools and the movement of water and the sense of calm and happiness that walking along a beach gives me.

Which place/s in Cornwall inspire you the most and why?

I live in St Mawgan and we are lucky to have some amazing stretches of beach and coastline nearby. My absolute favourites are Treyarnon Bay – from Treyarnon to Booby’s Bay in particular as well as Watergate Bay and Mawgan Porth.

I love the rocky coastline, rockpools, wide stretches of sandy beach and fascinating geology of these places.

Where do you create?

I have a studio at home that we converted from an old stable. It’s a lovely space and is gradually filling to the brim! I love having a dedicated space where all my stuff is, where I can make a mess, play my music as loud as I want and do my thing. I’m actually a very tidy person. I work best when things are tidy, and organised, but as I work I create mess. Studio life is a constant cycle of make mess, tidy up, repeat!

Give us an insight into your creative process. How do you get started?

Everything starts with observation and experience. For me that is walking and looking. I don’t tend to work in a sketchbook or make sketches when out walking, but I do take thousands of photos and also write haiku as a way of capturing and distilling what I am experiencing and fixing memories of places.

My phone camera acts as my sketchbook. My photos tend to be close ups of bits of seaweed or rock textures, patterns in the sand and so on rather than huge panoramas. And whilst I don’t work directly from photos, it’s this process of walking, looking and recording that starts everything I do. Every work, no matter how abstract, starts with something real.

Tell us about one of the favourite artworks you have created? Why do you like it so much and did making it teach you anything significant?

Probably my favourite painting of mine is this one – an abstracted painting inspired by my love of rockpools. I think it’s a really successful painting and it says everything about me as an artist – it’s full of texture and colour, it’s very much borne out of a love of experimenting with process and products, being made with plaster of paris on wood and hand finished with wax, and it comes directly from observation and a memory of sitting looking at deep rockpools. It took a long time to make, too – something which I think is important in building up a richness of surface. I think it’s a painting you should touch – the silky surface really suggests ripples on a pool. I truly love it! Also the title is a haiku – the haiku was written as a way of capturing the memory of gazing into the pool, and in turn inspired the painting.

You can find the painting on my website HERE.

a pool of stillness
the colour of soft sea-glass
ripples dance with light

Has failing at anything in your creative practice led to an epiphany or taken you in a new direction?

I wouldn’t say there have been any epiphanies or massive changes, more a gradual realisation and acceptance of the fact that art making is full of ‘failure’. If you are ‘failing’ you are doing something right! The more you make the more you realise that some things work and many (actually more) things don’t. I don’t like to use the word ‘failure’ in fact – I prefer to reframe things that don’t work as ‘opportunities’. As artists we constantly problem solve. How do I do this? How do I fix that? What if I tried this? If things don’t work out right at first they just give us opportunities to try something new or take them in a different direction.

Do you experience creative ruts and when this happens how do you deal with this?

Yes of course. It’s nice to think of an artist as someone who wafts about in a smock creating one masterpiece after another, having a lovely time, always full of inspiration.

It’s not like that!

Life gets in the way, energy ebbs and flows, creative energy ebbs and flows. I think I have just learned to go with the flow and not worry about whether I am feeling creative or not.

I do also find that if I am in the studio – even just tidying up – quite often something sparks and I find myself doing something even if I thought I wasn’t in the mood.

Do you have a favourite artist/s and have they inspired the way you create your own artworks?

My favourite artists are Picasso and Hockney. I think primarily because of their dedication to craft, to constant exploration and reinvention of practice, to forever seeking the new, the different. And for their work ethic - keeping on keeping on.

And currently I am inspired by so many contemporary artists practicing in Cornwall. I look at art all the time. I am fascinated by the variety of ways people have of expressing themselves visually.

What wisdom have you collected along the way that you would like to share with other creatives

Make art, make a lot more then make some more. That’s how you work out what you want to do and how you want to work.

And don’t underestimate the importance of play. Not everything we make needs to be a finished piece. Experimenting with materials or ideas strengthens our practice and sparks ideas.

One of my tutors at Newlyn said the following, which I really hold onto:

“Trust the process and the image will emerge.”

It’s so easy to get over-focused on outcome and then rush to the finish, and this can lead to settling for a painting that’s ‘good enough’ but maybe not as good as it could be. If you focus on your process and respond to your own work stage by stage as a piece develops, eventually you will reach a conclusion.

What’s your favourite art process book?

Waaaaaayyyyy too many to mention! But I really love the book ‘Remembering in Paint’ by Kate Reeves-Edwards, about David Mankin’s practice as it’s beautifully written, so informative and gives a real insight into an artist’s process.

What’s the best course - online or in person or both - that you have taken?

Everything I ever did at Newlyn Art School. Great exposure to contemporary artists, practical and very much inspiring each participant to find their own way, not just to copy what they are being shown.

And finally - what is your big dream for your art practice?

To keep on keeping on. To never stop exploring or learning. Ideally to make more sales as there’s always more money going out than coming in. But honestly I make the work for me and anything else is a bonus.

To find out more about Sharon’s work, vist her website HERE.

You can also follow Sharon’s work on Instagram HERE and sign up to her monthly newsletter HERE.

Visit Sharon’s You Tube channel HERE to see regular ‘Sketchercise’ activities and short films about art projects she is involved in.