About Me

Sharon Virtue is an artist, facilitator, trainer and visionary ‘inspirationalist’ currently based in Oakland, California, while working internationally in arts and creative community development.

Her work has two strands, one as a dancer and artist, creating paintings and ceramics, and the other as a creative community activator, teaching expressive arts workshops and facilitating community development projects. She has won several awards as an individual artist and her work is published in several art publications.

Travel is her greatest inspiration, and was the catalyst for her expansion from solitary artist into the realm of community. This site was designed to encourage the potential artist in everyone, that it IS possible to make a living with your artwork and make positive change in the world.

Sharon received a BA (hons) in Fine Art from Sheffield Polytechnic. She moved to London after graduating, and studied dance at the Laban Institute. After relocating to Vancouver to further dance studies at Simon Fraser University in Canada, she moved to San Francisco. Here she began working in ceramics again, at Ruby’s Clay Studio. www.rubysclaystudio.org

At Ruby’s Clay Studio, Sharon designed and managed the Mud Bus outreach project, a mobile clay studio. The Mud Bus won awards and funding from San Francisco Arts Commission, the Yahoo Employment Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Walter and Elise Haas Fund. Since 2001 She has been raising money in fundraising exhibitions, enabling her to fund volunteer international community art projects.

In 2012 Sharon returned to the U.K. and earned a Masters degree in Community Arts from Goldsmiths University, London. She is currently on the path to develop a global community of artists in her newest project idea Global Art Expeditions.