Artist Shar Coulson in her sunny Chicago studio.
"I hope that my work touches hearts and connects with the feelings we experience when connecting with nature."
For Featured Artist Shar Coulson, the moment when nature’s forms, human connection, and pure abstraction meet is the sweet spot. She calls her style Organic Abstraction, a blend of gestural line, layered color, and shapes that seem to emerge and dissolve before your eyes.
Her work is guided by pareidolia, an ability to see animals, plant-like forms, or figures in otherwise unrelated patterns. “It’s perception vs. reality that intrigues me,” she tells Artwork Archive. This curiosity is rooted in her formal training in figurative realism and comes alive in the freedom of her abstractions. Years as a designer and creative director sharpened her sensibility, while her love of nature fuels the movement and repetition in every piece.
From her Chicago studio, Coulson creates paintings where the abstract flirts with the recognizable and the line between perception and reality is always shifting.
Artwork Archive had the chance to chat with Shar about making the jump from the business world to an art career, finding beautiful forms spontaneously, and how to get ahead of every artist’s most dreaded part of the year: tax time.
You can see more of her work on Discovery and learn more about her art practice below:
Hidden Bounty FFF295, 2025, mixed media on cradled board, 36 x 40 in, and Calm Overspill FFF296, 2025, mixed media on linen, 40 x 40 in
Learning to Prioritize Artistic Spontaneity
For Shar Coulson, nearly every painting begins with black splatters.
Those drops and blobs she lays down onto her canvases are her points of departure, the beginnings of her journey into a painting. They get her imagination flowing, and allow her the freedom to build up her intricate mixed media paintings.
This more fluid approach marks a change for Shar, who spent years in the business world, where deadlines and deliverables ruled the day. But it wasn’t until she embraced this spontaneous way of working that she really came into her own as an artist.
“It’s the randomness of the marks that set me on a path of exploration,” she points out, “turning abstract, organic shapes into familiar forms.”
Shar's work begins with intuitive exploration, but expands to explore all of nature. Image courtesy of the artist
Beginning a Painting Is the Best Part
Shar admits that her favorite part of the artistic process is the very start of a painting, when every option is available and she can let her intuition lead.
One simple method she uses to get into this more open headspace? Speed: “I don’t have time to think because I’m working on the floor with a fast, intense rhythm,” she says. Taking her thinking mind offline and letting the process lead the way has driven her to some of her most exciting artistic discoveries.
As she quickly adds elements, she explains, “the lines, shapes, and composition take form, with figural elements emerging in every direction.”
Then comes the more methodical fine-tuning. “Once the forms become clear, the layering and defining process begins,” Shar observes. “I push, pull, shift, and refine, adding color and texture until my final mark is made.”
How does she know when she’s actually done? “The piece goes silent.”
Silent Lavishness FFF294, 2025, Mixed Media on Linen, 40 x 50 x 1.5 in
This Artist’s Secret Weapon
When you look at Shar Coulson's canvases, you might get a glimpse of a butterfly wing, or a cresting wave, or a rock formation. As she has developed her style as an artist, Shar has come to rely on this pattern-finding tendency, a kind of secret weapon that shapes her art.
“My paintings' nearly recognizable organic forms hint at animals, figures, and plant-like references,” she shares.
Though she begins each painting without a thought for figuration, the work slowly reveals these recognizable hints to her. That’s because Shar leans into her pareidolia, the ability of the mind to find meaningful forms in otherwise random shapes. When creating her paintings, these forms often “emerge quickly, ranging from a mere gestural line to a full-formed figural element.”
In the past, she was more likely to try to cover up these recognizable forms. But these days, she’s letting them remain, and allowing them to bring new depth to her work. As she puts it, “it’s only been in the recent couple of years that I've been able to embrace and enhance these elements to the point of recognition.”
At the Crossroads, 2020, acrylic polymer dispersion on laminated acetate, 9 x 12 in, and In the Nature of Things, 2020, acrylic polymer dispersion on laminated acetate, 12 x 9 in
Creating Human Connection Through Art
Shar’s ultimate goal for her art goes beyond technique and process.
"I hope that my work touches hearts and connects with the feelings we experience when connecting with nature," she reveals. This desire to help viewers "feel something fundamentally human" drives every artistic decision, from those initial black splatters to the moment she decides a piece is finally ready for the public.
It’s a gift that Shar likes to share through her paintings, allowing them to serve as bridges between the organic forms she discovers in her spontaneous mark-making and the universal emotions viewers experience when encountering natural beauty.
Hushed Excess FFF304, 2025, Mixed Media on Linen, 36 x 72 x 1.5 in
How to Start Taking Your Art Business Seriously
As Shar Coulson began her artistic journey, she really relished the full days of painting. “The early days of just creating were magical!” she reflects.
But with her background in business, she understood that to make painting her livelihood, she would have to be just as pragmatic about her artistic career.
“I had to finally admit that being an artist is not only the freedom of creating at my own pace, on my own time,” she told Artwork Archive. “It’s a business, too.”
As she began building up her art business, she started applying the lessons she’d learned in her earlier careers—things like planning for the future, making time for proper outreach, and being savvy about how she contacted galleries and collectors.
“Once I accepted that to reach my goals, I had to make time for marketing, promotion and business processes, everything began to fall into place,” she remembers.
A big part of making her artistic dreams a reality was finding the right tools to support her business. “The day I started painting full-time, I knew I needed an image management system as part of my practice,” she recalls. She looked around for something that could combine artwork inventory, private rooms for collectors, polished portfolios, sales and contact tracking features, and robust reports for galleries and tax preparation, and one service stood out from the rest for her: “Artwork Archive had it all, and continues to add and expand its functionality.”
FaunaFloraFigure112, 2019, Mixed Media on Canvas, 36 x 18 x 1.5 in
How Artwork Archive Has Streamlined Shar Coulson’s Art Business
One of Shar’s favorite Artwork Archive features is one that saves her countless hours of headache and stress: Inventory Reports.
"Because I keep my inventory up-to-date, running reports for my taxes makes tax prep that much easier," she explains.
For working artists, tax time can be overwhelming without proper documentation. Shar’s slow-and-steady approach throughout the year turns what could be a stressful scramble at tax time into a streamlined process. The ability to generate comprehensive reports instantly means she can focus her energy on creating rather than reconstructing months of sales, expenses, and inventory changes.
In today's art world, where opportunities can arise at parties, art openings, or just chatting with a neighbor, having instant access to her complete artwork information from any location has also given Shar the perfect tool to share her work with the world: “being able to access Artwork Archive from anywhere to review images, prices, locations, etc. is super helpful."
Don't Be Afraid of Tax Season:
Do you have a hard time keeping track of important sales records, receipts, and invoices? Does tax time mean a scramble for far-flung records in different software, spreadsheets, and the back seat of your car?
Let Artwork Archive take the stress out of income and expense tracking, so that doing your taxes can be a breeze. Get started with Income and Expense Tracking in Artwork Archive today.
How to Turn Your Passion Into a Full Time Art Career
After years in the business world, Shar was able to finally make the leap to being a professional artist. Doing so of course required committing fully to her artistic practice. But it also meant putting in place some smart processes that have saved her time on business admin, keeping her art inventory up to date in as simple a way as possible.
With Artwork Archive serving as her digital studio assistant, Shar has been able to steadily keep her expenses and revenue updated throughout the year, keep track of sales and inventory, and be ready with polished reports whenever tax time comes around. That has freed up enough time in her busy week to focus on creating her mesmerizing artworks, and to plan for the future of her career.
If she had one message for people aspiring to turn their art passion into their full time career, it’s a simple one: “Visualize your future and take risks!”
Shar uses Artwork Archive to keep her art career on track, so that she can focus on what she does best: paint.
No matter where you are in your art journey, getting your business side in order doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. A bit of structure now can mean more time and headspace for the work you actually want to be doing.
Artwork Archive helps artists build an online portfolio, stay on top of their inventory, and create things like tear sheets and invoices in just a few clicks. Start a free trial and see how it fits into your own process.
