“My work is an attempt to suggest a feeling or nuance that alludes to hidden affinities and qualities.”
A Journey from Photography to Painting
Sheryl Westergreen’s artistic evolution is deeply intertwined with her personal history, geographical roots, and professional background. Born and raised in Washington State, she has remained closely connected to the landscapes and atmospheres of the Pacific Northwest, which subtly inform her work. Before fully committing to painting, she pursued a career in healthcare, behavioral health, and psychotherapy—fields that nurtured her sensitivity to human emotion and the complexities of perception. While she always felt an inherent pull toward creative expression, her earliest artistic endeavors were in black-and-white photography, a practice she refined in a self-made darkroom. Captivated by the raw energy of urban life, she spent years immersed in street photography, observing and capturing fleeting moments.
A pivotal shift in her creative path came through a dream—an unconscious nudge that urged her to transition from photography to painting. This intuitive call led her to explore painting through formal education, eventually returning to school as a postgraduate to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. This transition was not merely a change in medium but a profound expansion of her artistic language. Through painting, she found a way to translate her internal experiences, emotional landscapes, and sensory impressions into abstract compositions. Whether inspired by travel, poetry, or moments of introspection, her work seeks to evoke subtle, often unspoken connections between places, emotions, and memory.
For Westergreen, painting is not about literal representation but about evoking a feeling—an atmosphere that lingers beyond the visual. She often works in series, each body of work emerging from a distinct emotional or conceptual catalyst. A trip to South America, for instance, inspired a collection of paintings for the SAM Gallery exhibition Color Excursion, where she translated the essence of the places she visited into vibrant, expressive forms. Similarly, other series, such as Inside a Leaf, Inside a Cloud, and Cloud Dreams, are born from meditative states, dreams, or internal reflections, offering viewers a glimpse into the ephemeral and the ineffable.
Sheryl Westergreen: The Discipline of Creation
Maintaining a consistent artistic practice requires not only inspiration but also discipline, a balance Westergreen has cultivated over time. Her creative process thrives in an environment that supports both focus and spontaneity. Natural and incandescent light play a crucial role in her workspace, allowing her to perceive colors and textures with clarity. Music is another essential element—whether classical, jazz, or contemporary—setting the tone for her sessions. At the moment, she finds herself repeatedly drawn to Annie Lennox’s album Bare, its introspective quality resonating with the rhythms of her work.
Uninterrupted studio time is a priority, and she structures her schedule to allow for deep engagement with her painting. She acknowledges, however, that stepping away from the canvas is sometimes just as important as being in front of it. Walking and exercise serve as forms of mental incubation, helping her process ideas that need time to develop beyond the confines of the studio. Recognizing when to embrace solitude and when to seek external stimuli is a skill she has refined, ensuring that her creative momentum remains steady.
Her artistic philosophy emphasizes the importance of maintaining a flow state—a sense of immersion where intuition and technique merge seamlessly. This approach allows her to translate complex emotions into visual language without over-intellectualizing the process. By treating her studio as both a sanctuary and a laboratory, she continues to push the boundaries of her work, embracing new materials and ideas with curiosity and openness.
Translating Emotion into Abstraction
Westergreen’s work resides firmly within the realm of abstraction, yet its foundations are often deeply personal. She draws inspiration from poetry, travel, and emotional responses to life’s events, allowing these experiences to inform the visual language of her paintings. While her early work included figurative elements, she gradually moved toward abstraction, a shift that allowed her greater freedom in expressing intangible states of being.
Her artistic influences reflect this evolution. She credits Hanneline Rogeberg, one of her professors, for shaping her early philosophy of painting. She also holds deep admiration for Odd Nerdrum’s mastery of brushwork, a quality she finds particularly striking. With Norwegian heritage in her family, she speculates that there may be an unconscious connection to these artists. Beyond this, she frequently references Joan Mitchell, Richard Diebenkorn, Mark Rothko, and Ellsworth Kelly—painters known for their evocative use of color, gesture, and composition. The sculptor and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi also serves as a source of inspiration, his work embodying a sense of harmony and spatial awareness that resonates with her own artistic sensibilities.
Her choice of medium further enhances the emotional depth of her paintings. Oil on canvas remains her primary material, valued for its richness and versatility. However, she has also explored ink drawing, oil pastels, collage, and working on board or paper. Most recently, she has begun experimenting with acrylics for an upcoming series, embracing the possibilities that different materials can offer. This openness to change and exploration is a defining characteristic of her practice, allowing her work to remain dynamic and ever-evolving.
Sheryl Westergreen: Painting as Poetic Interpretation
One of Westergreen’s most meaningful projects is her series The Angle of Repose, which takes its name and inspiration from a poem by Keith Pailthorp. The poem speaks of balance, movement, and the search for stillness—themes that resonate deeply with her artistic vision. With the poet’s permission, she has used these verses as a conceptual framework, translating their essence into visual form. This project exemplifies her approach to painting as a dialogue between language and image, where fragments of text serve as catalysts for abstract expression.
Her fascination with the intersection of poetry and painting extends beyond this series. She is currently collecting poetic fragments and sentence excerpts as inspiration for future bodies of work, continuing her exploration of the ways in which words can inform visual storytelling. This method allows her to engage with themes of memory, longing, and transformation in a way that is both personal and universal.
Westergreen’s art is a reflection of her inner world—a synthesis of experience, emotion, and intuition. Whether drawing from dreams, meditative states, or literary sources, she seeks to create paintings that evoke a sense of connection, inviting viewers to engage with them on an emotional level. Through her disciplined practice, thoughtful engagement with materials, and deep reverence for the act of creation, she continues to expand her artistic language, ensuring that her work remains both deeply personal and profoundly resonant.
