For more than thirty years, Sharon Kopriva has created spiritually evocative works that investigate her early Catholic faith, and her many travels throughout Peru. Working in a variety of media, Kopriva’s surreal, gothic sensibility comes to life through painting, drawing, and sculptural works made from paper mache and rope. Many of her works can appear sinister and dark, however, Kopriva assures us that she does not intend for her works to be perceived as scary or off-putting. Her work has been informed by her early experiences with Catholicism and the  old churches and relics that came with that. While sometimes appearing darkly gothic in nature, these reflections of her early experiences with religious iconography are also juxtaposed against a later shift away from Catholicism and into a more universalist devotion to the natural world. The artist says her current spiritual practice is one that primarily involves walking in the forests of the Pacific Northwest and on the land of her home in Idaho. The artist’s own Peruvian hairless dogs frequently appear in her works, as do a strong devotion to feminist ideals. While a sadness prevails in the investigation of the suffering that comes from our shared lived experience, it is offset by the beauty, magic, and connectedness we feel with one another. Kopriva was included in the seminal exhibit Fresh Paint: The Houston School (1985) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The curator Walter Hopps (the Menil Collection’s founding director) said that Dominique de Menil greatly admired Kopriva’s works and acquired several of her pieces “…thus personally picking Kopriva for the select group of Texas artists found in the museum’s collection. Clearly both the Christian and spiritual qualities in Sharon’s art touched Dominique de Menil.” 

This original drawing, created with oil crayon on paper, is of a crouching bird skeleton that seems to have landed or is waiting to take flight. Rendered in start black and red, the surreal image feels like a chimera–either a dream or perhaps a ghost of a bird that once was. The bird-figure also appears human in form, as if a hybridized figure, like many of Kopriva’s other drawings. Clearly an elegant draftswoman, Kopriva’s shading through the use of lines and hatchings create a texture that appears more complex than crayon on paper. 

Kopriva earned her MFA in painting from The University of Houston in 1981. She received Texas Artist of the Year award in 2001. Selected solo exhibitions include the Menil Collection, Houston (2000); Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans (2012); National Museum of Peru, Lima (2006); Metropolitan Museum of Monterrey, Mexico, (2015); Hilliard Art Museum, Lafayette (2019), among many others. Selected group exhibitions include the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC (1988); Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC (1996); Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth (2017). Selected permanent collections include the Menil Collection, Houston; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; The Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont; Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, among many others. Kopriva lives and works in Houston, Texas and Hope, Idaho.