Sharon O’Donnell

ARTIST BIO
Sharon O’Donnell is a current student of the Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours program at
UTAS Launceston. She was admitted to the University of Tasmania Roll of Excellence 2024, is a
recipient of the Madeline Gordon Gallery Art Award (2023), The Sue Henderson Award (2023), and
the Jon Lajos Prize in Fine Art (2022). She also was the recipient of the Rose-Marie LeRoi Scholarship
in Fine Art (2023).
Sharon has a background in ceramics and textiles, having recently worked in collaboration
with Waverley Woollen Mills and Design Tasmania on an acquisitional weaving. She received the
Collins Booksellers Smithfield Award (2020) in the Cairns Melting Pot National Ceramics Exhibition.
O’Donnell continues to create handcrafted ceramic and textile works that explore the
intersections and connections between place, family, and the natural environment.

ARTIST STATEMENT
Imprinted/Imprinting consists of four suites of ceramic works. ‘Imprinted’ ceramic
wall tiles, ‘Nurture’, ‘Resilience’, and ‘Growth’ family groupings.
The ‘Imprinted’ wall tiles are each imprinted from a pine tree growing on the land
where I live. These tiles serve as metaphors for my four sons. Although all the tiles originate
from the same tree, the bark, while protecting the tree will be affected in unique and
uncontrollable ways, leading to different pathways. This mirrors the individuality within a
family, where each person, through sharing the same roots, follows their own distinct
journey.
Growing up in the Pacific North-West region of Canada, Sharon was surrounded by
forests and mountains imprinting the importance of the natural environment from a young
age. She is a self-described nemophilist: someone with a love or fondness for forests or
woodland scenery, and someone who visits them often, and is now living in and discovering
the beauty of Tasmania.
The families of ceramic vessels ‘Nurture’, ‘Resilience’ and ‘Growth’ explore textures
inspired from the understory of the forest floor, including mosses and lichens as well as the
complexity and layering of woven textiles. The individual threads incised on the surfaces of
the vessels, along with the layering of slips and glazes, aim to express the intricate and
complex systems found in both forest and family ecologies.