Sharon Stone, Beyond Film: A Journey Through Art and the Soul
An exclusive interview in which the actress discusses how painting and spirituality shape her creativity
Looking at a Sharon Stone painting is like feeling the pulse of time: the colour vibrates, the gesture breathes, the form tells a story. For audiences who knew her as an absolute cinema icon – from the magnetic seduction of “Basic Instinct” to the dramatic depth of “Casino”, to the most intense and complex roles that defined her career – Stone today reveals another side of her creative power: that of a painter, author, activist, and cultural figure who traverses the arts with a presence capable of uniting instinct, memory, and vision.
Her history with painting, as she recounts in the interview, began as a child, alongside Vonne, her beloved aunt, a muralist, with whom she spent her days off from school.
That original connection with the pictorial gesture powerfully resurfaced during the pandemic, when Stone painted up to seventeen hours a day, transforming a period of global crisis into a return to the roots of her being.
International critics have recognized this evolution: Helen Stoilas and Whitney Mallet have praised her expressive power, while Jerry Saltz – a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the world’s most influential critics – dedicated an extensive essay to her work, even inviting her to his artist talks in Los Angeles and New York. Her exhibitions have been enthusiastically received by collectors, curators, and leading figures in the art scene.
Her creative journey, however, extends beyond painting and film. Sharon Stone is also an established author, with the New York Times bestseller, “The Beauty of Living Twice”, and is recognized as a cultural and humanitarian leader: her numerous awards include a Golden Globe, an Emmy, an Oscar nomination, a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, the Nobel Peace Summit Award, the Women Making History Award, and the United Nations Global Citizen of the Year.
Works like “River,” dedicated to her late nephew, transform grief into acceptance; the new portraits, born from a spiritual dialogue that the artist defines as a form of “creative channelling”, give voice to presences, memories, and intuitions that demand representation.
The new series of portraits, The Rogues Gallery Collection, conceived as an immersive, phone-free experience, invites the public to a direct encounter with art and with themselves, in a time suspended from the noise of the world.
In her current artistic phase, Stone maintains a unique balance between abstraction and figuration. Some of her figurative works originate from referential sketches by Gabriel Aubry, which become the starting point for a painting in which the visible and the intuitive intertwine.
At this moment in her life, Sharon Stone unites film, painting, and spirituality in a single creative thread, allowing each work to become a gesture of freedom, consciousness, and transformation.
And now, let’s let Sharon Stone speak: through her words, we enter her inner world, the heart of her art, and the profound vision that guides her new creative season.
How did your painting journey begin? Was it a sudden urge or a natural evolution of your expressiveness after the film?
When I was a kid, I spent all of my time off from school with my aunt and my grandmother, who lived next door to one another. My Aunt had a master’s degree in painting, and she painted murals on the walls of the houses. I learned to paint by being with her and ultimately painting with her when I was very small.
Your works blend abstraction and figuration: how does this “borderline” between the recognizable and the undefined arise, and what do you seek in the pictorial gesture?
Oh… come on; how like life this is. When does a thing become real? When does the real thing suddenly become abstract? I joked in school that the first impressionist was just a guy with bad eyesight.
In “River”, dedicated to your deceased nephew, the river almost resembles a human figure with open arms; how much did this painting help you process your grief and transform it into art?
Transformation is a process; this painting was the prettier part. That is the beautiful thing about painting for me: I can take those difficult feelings and push them through to a more enlightened, less dense place in myself and hopefully into the piece. River is a meaningful piece in my private collection, because it does afford the understanding of acceptance.
In your new portraits, you tell stories of souls who asked to be painted: how does this dialogue with the spiritual world arise, and how does it translate into your painting?
Since this happened for me with these paintings, I have had dialogue with other artists who have had similar experiences: talking to their sculpturers, drawing, artwork of all types. It seems to be less uncommon than I thought.
Yes, my paintings ‘talked’ to me, and I wouldn’t have believed it either, but they told me things I had to look up online to read about and understand. Things from other times and other places of which I had no knowledge.
Of course, when I played Ginger in Casino, there was no doubt for me that I could hear the woman whom this character was based on speaking to me in my mind and in my heart. I do believe that there is a type of artistic channeling that sometimes, when I get very lucky happens for me.
The “Rogues Gallery” exhibition offers an immersive and “unplugged” experience, free of phones. What do you hope the public will discover in this direct encounter with art and with themselves?
I envision my new portrait series, titled The Rogues Gallery, being experienced as an unplugged, phone-free art happening, complete with personally hosted performative experiences that will take immersion to a whole new level.
The transition from abstract to figurative (in your new portrait series) marks a new phase in your pictorial language. What inner need led you to portraiture and the memory of faces?
There have been many discussions about The Muse; in fact, I have played such a character for director/writer Albert Brooks.
In ancient times, when an artist or performer was in their excellence, the audience would clap and shout ALLAH ALLAH as they believed this would call for God to continue blessing them with this energy of brilliance. Eventually, through ego and finance, people began to believe that they were the energy all by themselves, and when that didn’t always work, they called upon their Muse to come, to assist.
But who is the Muse if not the God energy flowing freely through ourselves? Is it not allowing oneself to live in god consciousness?
I paint what I feel to paint, I listen, and I do.
How has your film experience – from the success of “Basic Instinct” to more dramatic roles like “Casino” – influenced the way you construct a canvas or tell a visual story?
The very fact that I am clear that it IS a story, I’m sure, is from my love of literature and film.
Though my love of art has only grown with my ability to travel around the world and see art from every century and every culture, to be a student of art is to me, to have experienced not only the art but also from whence it came.
I went to Belgium and went to the house of Magritte, and to see all of the objects and life that lives in those astounding paintings just there, in the living room, his wife’s gorgeous rugs on the walls; well… life is the influence of the artist, the canvas varies.
What have you learned about yourself through painting that you hadn’t yet discovered as an actress?
I am equally inspired alone in an empty studio, with tubes of paint, brushes, and canvases, as I am on a movie set with all of my talented, interesting colleagues.
You’ve often spoken about your spiritual journey and Buddhism: how has this philosophy transformed your way of experiencing, creating, and interpreting reality?
Yes. This is a very centring way of life for me, in what has become a rather theatrical reality.
Looking to the future, are you already envisioning a new direction for your art or a possible dialogue between film, painting, and spirituality in your next creative chapter?
Yes, I am finding that these worlds are already gently combining. As I feel more comfortable with myself as a more realized person, I am finding that all of the facets of my world are getting comfortable with the idea of me being more.
Interview by Fabio Pariante: X • Instagram • Website