Sharon Wybrants

Sharon Wybrants (born 1943 in Miami Beach, Florida)^[1] is an American painter, performance artist, and educator.

Wybrants earned an AFA at Sullins College (1961–63), a BFA at Ohio Wesleyan University (1963–65), and an MA in Painting, Fine Art at Hunter College (1972–74).^[2] In 1973, using the married name Sharon Wybrants-Lynch,^[3] she was a founding artist-member of SOHO20 Gallery, the second all-women cooperative exhibition space in New York City.^[4] She remained with the gallery until 1978.^[2] Her first solo show at SOHO20, in December 1973, was favorably reviewed in Arts Magazine.^[5] She exhibited paintings and drawings of "vigorous, creative women whose faces defy any judgment based on culturally-defined standards of feminine beauty,"^[6] including an expressive self-portrait called Revolutionary Woman (1973),^[6] which was later acquired by Western Illinois University.^[7] For her second solo exhibition at SOHO20, Wybrants showed painted "images of exaggerated feminine sensibility,"^[6] and again received a positive review in Arts Magazine.^[8] Wybrants also exhibited in group shows, including The Eye of Woman (1974, Hobart and William Smith Colleges) and Year of the Woman (1975, Bronx Museum of the Arts).^[1] In 1974, she received the Childe Hassam Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.^[1]

In a group show at SOHO20 called Showing Off (1975), Wybrants exhibited Self-Portrait as Superwoman (Woman as Culture Hero) (1975), a ten-foot-high pastel study for a projected monumental oil painting that the critic John Perreault described as "more than slightly tongue-in-cheek. But it demonstrates that women artists have egos too, sometimes just as big as any man's. And why shouldn't they?"^[9] Also on view was another pastel, Wybrants's Self-Portrait in Superwoman Costume with Rauschenberg in the Background (1975),^[9] which humorously shows the artist with a picture of Robert Rauschenberg tacked to the wall behind her like a pin-up.^[6] The oil version of Self-Portrait as Superwoman (Woman as Culture Hero) (1977–78) was intended for The Sister Chapel, a collaborative feminist installation that celebrated eleven historic, mythical, and conceptual female "role models."^[6] Wybrants's self-portrait is a tribute to her own achievements as a woman and as an artist,^[10] but it was also intended to communicate something of the uncertainty and personal suffering behind the groundbreaking accomplishments of the feminist art movement.^[6] Although the original Self-Portrait as Superwoman disappeared in the 1980s and was probably destroyed,^[6][11] Wybrants recreated the painting for a new exhibition of The Sister Chapel at Rowan University Art Gallery in 2016.^[12]

In 1976, the pastel version of Self-Portrait as Superwoman was used as the image on a poster to promote an Equal Rights Amendment Work Conference sponsored by the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women.^[6][13][14] The pastel version was also exhibited a second time at SOHO20 in Superwoman, Beauty and the Beast, Wybrants's third solo show at the gallery.^[6] Also displayed was a series of twelve self-portraits that documented the year-long breakup of Wybrants's marriage,^[15] each reflecting "a different mood and a different way of seeing herself," as noted by the art critic Ellen Lubell.^[16] The paintings ranged from During the Separation (1976), which Marjorie Kramer likened to "a wild animal looking for possible dangers,"^[17] to Cathartic Conversation with Al Hansen (1976), which is looser and far less constrained.^[15] Wybrants's twelve self-portraits were praised by reviewers in Arts Magazine,^[16] ARTnews,^[18] The Feminist Art Journal,^[15] Womanart,^[17] and The SoHo Weekly News.^[19]

Between 1978 and 1980, Wybrants created a number of performances in addition to working as a painter. Master Lady and Her Four Master Pieces (1980), for example, featured Wybrants being dragged around a stage by a group of young men on leashes who were wearing bondage-type costumes.^[6] For some of her performances, Wybrants collaborated with colleagues, including the artist and designer Dan Kainen.^[20]

While living in Woodstock, New York between 1981 and 1984, Wybrants hosted a weekly cable television talk show called "Fire, It's a Verb."^[2] According to her, "While we talked, I'd draw my guest's pastel portrait that showed on the live video. It was a bit of a challenge to complete it in a half hour, to have it look good all the time, and conduct an interview."^[21] In 1990, Wybrants was the founding director of Challenged Artists Together, a non-profit art organization for children, adolescents, and adults with disabilities in Las Cruces, New Mexico.^[2] By 1992, the program served thirty adults and fourteen children.^[21] Wybrants taught studio art, digital art, and art history at the Berkshire School from 1997 until 2009.^[2] Between 1981 and 2012, her works were exhibited in Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, and Italy.^[22] In 2010, Wybrants was awarded an artist residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts.^[22] She continues to paint and still creates self-portraits, one of which was recently exhibited in Selfies & Self-Portraits: 21st C Artists See Themselves (2017) at Viridian Artists in New York City.^[23]

• Sharon Wybrants on LinkedIn
• Sharon Wybrants on NJTV
• Sharon Wybrants on a panel for The Sister Chapel