Sherry Jo Horton
Biography

                Life and location have been the inspirations for my creativity and the evolution of my work throughout the years.  I grew up and studied art with the open spaces and big skies of southwest Texas.  From a Master’s Degree in Art Education, to five years in the Dallas Police Department as a patrol officer, then a position as adjunct professor at Berkeley College in New Jersey, I have touched many aspects of life, from the most basic, to the extreme and the extraordinary.

                 Texas instilled a love for the open spaces and big skies of  the southwest which have continued to be subjects of inspiration through the years.  

                My work and life in the Dallas Police Department as a patrol officer was an experience which instilled an even greater appreciation for simplicity, while increasing my desire to portray the simple things that sometimes go unnoticed in our fast-paced society. 

                 The move to New Jersey as an Adjunct Professor of visual arts in the School of Interior Design at Berkeley College expanded my cultural appreciation through the close proximity to New York City with its’ diverse population. My studio was across the Hudson River from Manhattan which was a thrilling diversion and created a greatly expanded learning curve in my life and in my art.

                 I paint where I live and travel, so the richness of the northeast beauty while living in New Jersey provided a great resource of subjects for landscape paintings. My studio in East Tennessee was surrounded by favored subject matter which expands throughout the Southern Highland area. The Appalachian, the Blue Ridge and the Great Smokey Mountains were all within quick access.  Having grown up in the flatlands I quickly fell in love with running water and trees that touch the sky, so have returned to paint East Tennessee and the surrounding states since the early nineties.

After some months painting in Arizona my studio is now settled in the edge of the Texas hill country in beautiful and historical Georgetown just north of Austin.  

                 With a strong devotion to God, I work to achieve a sense of serenity and peace in my work that will influence an atmosphere with its' presence.

 Artistic Motivation

               I am interested in the portrayal of 2 dimensional art in a manner which draws the viewer to experience a sense of the 3^rd dimension.  Being a sculptor at heart, I work to achieve dimension by depicting form through exaggeration of light and shadow.

                The lives of most of us are tremendously fast-paced and intensely complicated.  In my own life, I find the desire to simplify expressed most often in the subject matter of my art. Interestingly, as I move toward this simplicity of subject matter, the process becomes more complicated -- i.e., a complicated means to a simple expression, the hopeful end of which is rest.

                It is my goal as an artist to create an atmosphere of rest and peace; a place to sit down with the simple and basic things.

                I have maintained an open studio or studio/gallery for my entire 35 year career to enable clients to have personal contact with a working studio and to interact with me as a professional working artist and craftswoman.

 Juried Group Exhibits

 Juried Professional Memberships

 - American Women Artist, supporting member

 - International Guild of Realism

 - Oil Painters of America, associate member