Marshall Sharpe

Marshall Sharpe is a California-based painter whose work explores queer joy, intimacy, desire, and belonging within the landscapes of California. His paintings place the male figure within swimming pools, coastlines, mountains, gardens, and other spaces of leisure and escape, presenting queer life as tender, sensual, and fully embedded in the natural world.

Working primarily in oil and acrylic, Sharpe combines expressive color, loose brushwork, and carefully observed figures to create scenes that move between lived experience, memory, and imagined possibility. His work considers visibility and vulnerability while emphasizing pleasure, connection, and joy as forms of resistance.

Sharpe received an MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a Professor of Art and Director of the Hartnell College Art Gallery in Salinas, California.

His work has been presented nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art Museum in South Korea and the NYC Phoenix Art Collective in New York. His work has also appeared at the Bakersfield Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara, and Californi...

2020 — Master of Fine Arts in Painting, University of California, Santa Barbara, California
2012 — Master of Teaching, Chaminade University, Honolulu, Hawaii
2010 — Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in Studio Art, Elon University, Elon, North Carolina

2025 — Crosscurrents, Glassbox Gallery, University of California, Santa Barbara, California
2025 — Roots to Horizons, Hartnell College Art Gallery, Salinas, California
2024 — Resonantly Me, Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, California
2024 — ArtMix, Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, California
2024 — Selfhood, Strata Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
2024 — Summertime, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee
2023 — Art Teleported, solo exhibition, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art Museum, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
2023 — Annual Juried December Exhibition, State of the Art Gallery, Ithaca, New York
2023 — It Was All Very Queer, St. Louis Artists’ Guild, St. Louis, Missouri
2023 — Personal Histories, Art Saint Louis, St. Louis, Missouri
2022 — Solo exhibition, NYC Phoenix Art Collective, New York, New York
2022 — Family Ties, Giertz Gallery at Parkland College, Champaign, Illinois
2022 — Color 2022, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art Museum, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
2022 — SIUE Faculty and Alumni Exhibition, The University Museum, Edwardsville, Illinois
2022 — Proud: Pride & Expression, Jacoby Arts Center, Alton, Illinois
2021 — Unending, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, Cali...