Luke Sharkey, American Painter, b.2002 New York, NY
Education:
Rochester Institute of Technology 2020 - 2024. BFA Industrial Design cum laude.
Fiorello LaGuardia High School 2016 - 2020
About
My parents won the green card lottery in 1996 and they moved to New York. I was born at Lenox Hill Hospital in 2002. I have always lived in Queens. I started painting in my bedroom at 14 and nothing yet has changed. I think my greatest skill is my ability to work without judging myself. I started by painting streams of consciousness and I still work that way but slightly more pointed. Painting has always been to me the way sleep is described by doctors. That is the one time where my body relaxes and my brain is given time to process and organize information and to remove waste. It’s a religious thing to me. I don’t believe in God but I was raised Catholic.
I learned art at LaGuardia High School, but I’ve never had any kind of formal painting education. I went to college for Industrial Design and it sucked. My development as an artist has been essentially entirely by myself and in my own head. This year I have finally begun to show pieces which is very exciting. I spend all of my time painting but I don’t think about painting often, instead I think about other things like the world, or diseases, or about people very often. I think the key to art is honesty. I am not successful.
I am just documenting my life and I paint for myself because I love to do it.
In my work I am painting the mental act of coping with the absurdity of the modern world.
I have lived in Queens my whole life.