Meet Shara Mays | Visual Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Shara Mays and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Shara, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I wanted to have autonomy not only over my career but also over my mission and my values. One feels this immensely if they are a visual artist or any other creative kind. When I worked for others, I had to compromise on many things to complete a project. As a result, many of the projects I cared so much about—because I am an empath— in corporate settings got diluted and reduced to the most trivial of ideas. I wanted to stay true to my ideas and to experiment with them, and even if they weren’t successful, at least I would have tried. I wanted my ideas to flow into the world unburdened.

As a visual artist, your role is to ask more significant questions about the world, reflect on what’s happening, and create conversations around prescient topics. You can’t do that if you are up for a professional development review or if your boss doesn’t want you to be innovative. And your boss shouldn’t have to if they don’t want to. But if you want to be someone who communicates creatively with your art, then you can’t work for anyone else.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
As an artist inspired by the history of abstraction, my work is a dialogue between identity and landscape. I engage with natural elements like mountains, beaches, and marshes in the natural world and then paint how these spaces make me feel once I’m in the studio. My visual work creates conversations about real-life identity. My practice explores themes of access and restriction, inviting reflection on belonging and liberation. Each piece documents history, emotion, time, and place.

I am interested in stories connected to African diasporic heritage as sources of inspiration. I reflect on personal histories related to land and its communities, fostering discussions about what is land ownership and who has the right to claim the memory of a particular place.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d like to dedicate a shout out to my husband Mark. Mark has stuck by my side for many, many years, watching me slowly become the visual artist that I am today. He has always had faith in my abilities.

Website: https://www.sharamays.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sharamays

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharamays

Image Credits
Shots of work by Chris Hanke
Headshot by Gale Porter
Studio selfie by me