Few artists of the 20th century can boast a life of sojourns as rich and artistically textured as that of Sheila Eaton Isham. Born in New York City in 1927, the American abstract painter lived and traveled with her diplomat husband in Germany, Russia, Hong Kong, Washington, D.C., Paris, Haiti, and New York, absorbing the various influences and traditions of each place into her work. Throughout a dedicated career spanning over five decades, Isham used painting, lithography, book arts, and collage to explore her enduring interest in philosophy and nature, which she cited as her greatest teacher. As Edward Solanski, a critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, once astutely noted, "Isham's work is ultimately not about describing or symbolising but about generating life force."
Read MoreIt was in the mid-1960s in Washington, D.C. that Isham took up using light-boxes and the airbrush to create atmospheric colour abstractions with impressionistic light effects, for which she is best known. The technique of the airbrush, along with her ethereal palette, allowed her to create cloud-like, sublime forms that capture the sensation of the numinous. Reviewing her 1967 exhibition at the Jefferson Place Gallery in The Washington Post, Paul Richard wrote, "The viewer feels he's surrounded by swirling and transparent light-soaked clouds."
Unlike many Washington Colour School painters who were concerned first and foremost with the expression of colour as material, Isham's works were decidedly more metaphysical, "material expressions of ecstatic visions, avatars of what she considered a divine singularity. . . Bursts of colour, yes, but more: floating clusters of energies that suggest vibrations on a higher spiritual plane," as noted by art historian Patricia Lewy.
Hollis Taggart began representing Isham in 2022, who had her first solo exhibition with Hollis Taggart in February 2023. The show focused on her paintings from 1969 to 1978, and was accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue. Isham's work is held in many important collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D. C.; Baltimore Museum of Art; Library of Congress; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Yale University Art Gallery; Princeton University Art Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; New Orleans Museum of Art; New York Public Library; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; among others.
Text courtesy Hollis Taggart.
