Sharon Sussman primarily works in oil paintings, smalti mosaic murals, tadelakt plaster sculptures, and digital painting and animation.
Sharon began her art studies with a BA in Fine Art from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) followed by a mentorship with Miguel Argüello, a Spanish traditional realist painter. After several years of teaching art at UCSC and developing her individual style, she was accepted into San Jose State University's CADRE: Computers in Art, Design, Research, and Education program, earning an MA in Digital Art and Animation. She pursued interface design work for companies such as Apple and Hewlett-Packard, and subsequently as a Digital Development trainer for the artists and animators at DreamWorks Feature Animation. As much as she trained traditional artists and animators in digital media, these exceptional artists were her teachers also.

Appreciative of an amazing tenure at DreamWorks but wanting new experiences and challenges, Sharon accepted a professorship at Kapi‘olani Community College on Oahu. During her 17 years there she developed the Digital Animation Program and mentored students to award-winning projects. She also re-immersed herself in traditional painting - plein air pieces of the Hawaiian seascape - an inevitable extension of her daily morning swims. It was during a sabbatical that she studied the Byzantine glass style of mosaic at Mosaicos Venecianos de México, the same historic studio where Diego Rivera, Antonio Siqueiros, and others worked in the 1950's. This led to translating her paintings into mosaic and working with this mosaic style on 3-dimensional forms. Most recently she is combining a Moroccan plaster technique known as Tadelakt with smalti glass on both 2D and 3D works. Drawing from this diverse toolbox of talents, Sharon pulls the materials that best help translate her extraordinary surroundings into art.

That inspiration also comes from the culture of the places Sharon has lived. She enjoys weaving in the traditional Hawaiian lauhala style, growing the flowers and fruits of Hawai‘i in her garden, and continuing to study Spanish from her years living in a Mayan Indian village in Yucatán and on a dairy farm in Costa Rica.