Short Bio
Barry William Scharf is a master painter, sculptor, photographer and professor of art with a history of creating award-winning art and exhibition installations from the late 60's to present. He has been making art for over 55 years with over 25 public and one-man shows at museums and galleries internationally.
Statement
Barry William Scharf is an artist whose work is centered in expressing the spiritual within nature and life. He paints his visions through both abstract imagery and a poetic narrative reality. In this way, the viewer is encouraged to experience feelings as visual imagery, sound as color, and prayer as composition.
Resume / CV
Summery of accomplishments
Appointed to the board of St George, Utah Arts Commission 2021 to present.
Barry Scharf has been creating award-winning art including exhibition experience from the late 60’s to present.
2022 sculpture selected by Art Around the Corner and displayed in the lobby of Intermountain Hospital, St George.
In November of 2019 to January of 2020 his work was honored with a career retrospective at UT State Museum Gallery in St George Utah. This one-man exhibition spanned over 50 years of his artworks.
2015 his photo work was included as part of the International Exposure Awards shown in New York and at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
While teaching at the Art Institute of Seattle he became a semifinalist in the Adobe Design Achievement Awards for both 2011 and 12 in the “Innovation in Traditional Media in Education”.
His sculpture was selected for inclusion in the 2006 and 2016 Bellevue International Invitational Biennials. Washington
Barry is a “Guru Award” finalist winner in artistic category of “Photoshop Digital Art” at three conferences (2001-2003-2005) hosted by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. In 2007-08, he was part of the Adobe team
that helped to develop and beta test the new brush engine and other improvements to Photoshop CS4.
Barry has also been working with and teaching Photoshop for over 16 years as an instructor of advanced digital theory, 2D design, digital painting, and digital photo manipulation during his tenure at the Art Institute of Seattle, 1996-2012. As the senior lecturer at SIGGRAPH 07, San Diego, he lectured and demonstrated Photoshop skills to recruit students for the AIS campus.
While teaching traditionally in the classroom he also researched, designed and facilitated a class for digital photography students on a photo-teaching tour of Italy… traveling from Milan to Venice, through the major cities and hill towns south to Siena and through many Tuscan villages ending in Rome, 2009.
In 2008, his photography won first place in the Full Circle International Photography Competition from the UK.
Barry has had over 22 one-person and group shows at galleries and museums. His work was part of the prestigious by invitation only 1994 Northwest Artists Exhibition at the Seattle Convention Center.
In 1998, by the invitation of the Mayor, his artworks where placed on exhibition for one year, at the Kirkland, Washington City Hall.
Selected by the King Arts Commission in Seattle as sustaining support evaluator to review the local Museums of Art, art centers and other funded cultural projects. He reported to the commission on implementation of funds with recommendations for grant continuance or termination.
Before living in the Northwest, Barry lived and worked in Los Angeles (1975-1993) there he developed a reputation for leading edge paintings and sculptures. A highly focused young artist, he was enmeshed in the L.A. art scene and successful in his fine art career. His work won awards, was collected and reviewed by museums, and art critics. He was recognized by the LACMA curator as a stylistic leader for his use of illusion drop-shadow abstractions.
He was a founding director of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), a C.E.T.A. project that used artists for community renewal. The project was acclaim as a significant influence in the revitalization of L.A.s’ inner city. This project created low-rent studios that drew artists into unoccupied buildings. Soon to be followed by architects and other professional people into the old section of the city, thus creating revitalization that is still part of the LA scene. Over the years, LACE has become one of the most successful art projects in L. A. history.
