Actress—and Now Painter—Sharon Stone on Her Newfound Success. ‘I Feel Free Now.’

The award-winning actress and humanitarian—who late last year was honored as the “Global Citizen of the Year” by the United Nations Correspondents Association—grew up painting under the tutelage of her aunt and briefly studied art at Edinboro University in her native Pennsylvania. During the Covid-19 lockdown, Stone returned to artmaking and hasn’t stopped, sometimes painting in her home studio for up to 17 hours per day. 

“In college, I sold every painting I created because everybody wanted to buy them and I had to eat, so I sold them for US$25 or US$35. Now it’s the same thing, but it’s thousands instead of dollars,” says Stone, who turned 66 last month. “So I’m at a fancy party and someone who has seen my paintings says ‘oh my God they’re fantastic, how can I get one?’ and I’m like commission, I guess? It’s not college anymore, but I still have to pay the rent.” Figuratively speaking, at least.

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Stone has been riding a wave of critical acclaim, having been chosen three times for a solo exhibition over the past year, with shows in Los Angeles; Greenwich, Conn.; and Berlin, where her “Totem” exhibition is on display at Galerie Deschler through June 22.

Earlier this month, Stone launched her most ambitious project yet—a new exhibition entitled “My Eternal Failure”—in San Francisco, where she lived for six years in the late ’90s and early 2000s. The series of 18 paintings is on view to the public by appointment through August 31 at Gallery 181, which sits 700 feet above the city in the 181 Fremont Residences building.

“I think this show set me free, and that’s why it’s my biggest and most important show,” Stone says.. “I feel free now. I don’t feel that sense of proof of concept.” 

The exhibition’s titular work, a 72-inch by 120-inch diptych, is typical of Stone’s ambitious approach.

“Most of my work is pretty large—that piece took me two and a half years. I worked and worked on that thing, I had it out in the garden, I had it out in rainstorms and everything, I was trying to get all of San Francisco onto that painting,” she says.

The city has played a major role in Stone’s artistic journey. While living there in 2001, she experienced a massive brain hemorrhage, a near death experience that—as recounted in her 2021 memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice—profoundly affected Stone’s creativity and forever changed her ability to see colors. 

For several of the new works, Stone was inspired by the Bay Area and its societal diversity. Pieces like The Bay, The Bridge, and Stinson Beach Day/Night, evoke the local landscape, though abstract, moody works such as Unmoored and Blue Dream are open to interpretation.

“No painting should ever be wholly understood, for starters,” she says. “I could explain my works all day, but I can’t be the interpreter of another person’s view, I can’t say that I see blue the way you see blue.”

Stone describes her painting skills as a “progression.” “But like when you’re acting, you get to a point where you’re really only good when you really finally get free. That’s how the process of every artistic journey is: The more you do it, the less there is to do.”

“It takes a long time to get free. I was very lucky because I painted all my life, and I painted for me,” she says. “You have to get to a point where the thing you do is clean, clear, free, and simple.”Stone’s art has been praised by collectors, critics, and experts ranging from New York magazine’s Jerry Saltz. As he wrote: “In a sort of mystic unraveling, I see someone living a life in art. Being a freedom machine. She more than survives. Sharon Stone walked through the valley of death and into an art supply store.” 

While mentioning Miro, Kandinsky, Picasso, Frankenthaler, O’Keefe, and de Kooning as major influences, Stone singled out the Russian artist Aleksandr Rodchenko as a beacon. “I’m so crazy about Rodchenko. I’m very, very inspired by that kind of work. I love brutalism, I find it very interesting,” she says.

As many artists do, Stone finds refuge in her home studio, a labor of love that caused her to reconfigure her historic Beverly Hills mansion.

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“I bought Montgomery Clift’s estate and over the past 30 years I’ve rebuilt it and put it back together…for my studio, I took the old two-story pool house/guesthouse, kept the original framework, opened it up and put big skylights in it,” she says. “We put nails along the walls at different heights, I hang my canvases. There’s a huge table where the dining room once was that I can work on top of, and it’s wonderful because it has such unbelievably great light.” 

Today, the studio provides the anchor to her day.

“I walk out of my house, down the staircase and around, and I’m there. It’s so fabulous. I walk in, pick canvases, and put them up,” Stone says. “I put on some music, light a candle, and I just feel like it’s the most immersive, welcoming environment.” 

Stone’s 4 million Instagram followers have watched her immersion into the art world, and while she has enjoyed the positive feedback, she offers a caveat.

“We old people know that everything you put up on social media, they can own and it never goes away, it’s always attached to you. I’m cautious about what I put out there,” she says. “I’m not sure I want my best images on social media, so sometimes I was just posting my half-finished stuff, and people started responding to that and I thought, wait until you see my good stuff!”

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Though Stone has focused exclusively on painting over the past few years, she hasn’t closed the door on the medium on which she built her career. 

“I’d really like to work as an actress, but I’d like to work at my own capacity and ability. I’m probably just going to stay home and paint until I get offered parts that are appropriate for the amount of labor intensive filmwork I’ve already done. Let’s face it, I’ve done 120 projects, I don’t really need to come in for a week,” she says.

“It’s just like with the painting, I’m not going to come over and paint your baseboards, I’m not going to come in for four days. It’s the same thing, if you want me to come in at a capacity that’s representative of my skill set, I would love to work again as an actress.”

Stone’s newfound career has put a pause on another of her artistic outlets: her first novel. Though the book, which Stone says “starts in the 1970s and has something to do with nuns,” isn’t based on her personal experiences, she says that “many of the things I’ve learned in my life have helped me to understand how to write this book.”

“I’m two-thirds of the way through writing,” she says, “but this painting thing is now in the way.”