ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES - SHARYN SOWELL

Sharyn Sowell's original designs are cut freehand from a single sheet of paper using only a pair of sharp scissors and abundant imagination. Deft fingers seem to slice through paper, revewling a sparrow's wing, a dancing child, or violets peeking through a grassy meadow.

After twenty years as a designer of fine jewelry, the artist switched mediums, and now is known for detailed paper cuts of pastoral scenes and delicate florals that look fresh from the garden. Sometimes the images are complex black and white silhouettes; sometimes she adds watercolor pastels, or colored paper for stunning color.

The artist's work is executed with tiny snips of swiss scissors and long strokes from a pair of heirloom shears that once lay in her mother's kitchen drawer. The results have become rubber stamps, garden gates, tableclths, fine art posters and more. "My work celebrates the miracles we see every day if we open our eyes to simple pleasures", says Sharyn. Cirtics call her work "striking...imaginative".