Sharon Stone walked through the valley of death and into an art supply store.
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John Waters once talked to me about The curse of fame.
to be taken seriouslybythe art world.
Usually such people are looked at askance, or not looked at at all.
Theyre treated as novelty acts, ones that exist outside the serious insider art world.
Sharon Stone is one of these artists.
I first noticed her work during the pandemic whenshe began posting it on Instagram.
Here was this personage, this legend, this star, painting.
And she worked constantly.
She was covered in paint.
At first I just watched.
I was amused, thinking,Fun.
Another movie star who paints.
Then I kept watching.
Stone is among the most looked-at people alive.
Here she was alone.
Working, and growing.
Often with nonartists, they find a trick or gimmick and repeat it.
This was not happening.
In him I found a passionate activist artist.
It made me think of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.
I knewI had to write about him.
Few have had as much taken away from them as Stone.
It went undiagnosed for nine days, her bleeding into her own brain all the while.
She saw colors, hallucinated.
Even so, she stopped being offered parts.
She had lost her place in line, as she put it.
Then her world was taken away.
She lost her beloved child in a custody suit.
As she puts it, Style is what you do with what is wrong with you.
In a sort of mystic unraveling, I see an artist, someone living a life in art.
Being a freedom machine.
It is easy to shun the work of movie stars.
She more than survives.
I was hit with lightning when I was a kid.
I must have been 16?
It literally knocked me across the kitchen, and I hit the refrigerator and was justout.
And my mother not that this was unusual for her belted me.
She hit me across the face as hard as she could.
That brought me to, and then she took me to the hospital.
I had to be on a heart machine for about a week because it gave me an arrhythmia.
My mother was hanging sheets on a clothesline and the horse took me under the line.
I was nearly decapitated.
My neck was really badly cut open.
And then I had a stroke and nine-day brain bleed when I was 41.
Can you talk a bit about that?
You actually got into the carriage with death.Yes.
I looked at him and said Oh, Im dying, arent I?
And he said, Youre bleeding into your brain.
I called my mother and my best friend.
I felt like I was going to them.
And then I felt like I was kicked in the chest,reallyhard.
I dont know if they defibrillated me, but I [intake of breath] and sat up.
I went into the bathroom and peed for what seemed like an hour.
I just felt so out of my body.
There were about ten of us, and it was right after 9/11.
So the whole world was traumatized.It was awful.
Some people were dying and some were making it, and it was so traumatic.
I lost 18 percent of my body mass.
And it was a nightmare because of my fame.
He was crazy and had to be fired.
Eventually my best friend convinced them to try one more angiogram.
My artery was hanging by a thread.
I had to have an eight-, nine-hour surgery.
I woke up later with metal coils in my neck and no artery.
And the recovery was long and grueling and traumatizing but life transforming.Yeah.
About seven years of recovery.
I couldnt write my name or rememberanything.
I thought the gardener was a burglar.
I just didnt know anything.
My marriage was over.
It was not a great place to attempt to be recovering.
You know how sometimes life gives you taps on the shoulder?
You should probably think about making some changes.
You really need to do something different.
And suddenly you find yourself teeth-down in the dirt?
It was like that.
Like, I wasnt listening.
So much was being taken away from you so fast Everything.
Which later connects to the name of your first exhibition, Shedding.Shedding.
So you were in the carriage with Death and Eternity.
You had given up everything and everybody had sort of given up on you.And I was okay with it.
You were?Yeah.
When I got home from the hospital I couldnt sleep during the night.
I could only sleep during the day.
I just kept saying I really dont even know why Im here.
I dont even know whats happening or why.
But I need someone to protect my son.
I had a 1-year-old child.
My husband was filing for divorce, and he and his girlfriend wanted custody.
They got it, and along the way disparaged me as a person.
I lost my career, I lost my baby, everything.
Its the strangest thing.
It had a woman holding a vase upside down.
And I remember asking the checkout person, Whats that about?
Why is the vase upside down?
I dont get it.
And the person explained, Thats the absolute moment of complete peace, where youre at total emptiness.
Something about that really stuck with me.
I recognized that being completely empty doesnt mean that youre broken, it can mean that youre at peace.
When it was over, she was like, Wow, do you want to go home?
and I was like, Jesus, no!
Ive already been through all this, like just do it now!
Tell me what youve been up to lately!
Talk to me and get me through all this.
And I was like, Oh, so you go up there and do dentistry?
And she was like, No, I teach forgiveness.
I was like, Thats incredible.
Can you do that with me?
Can you come over to my house and teach me how to forgive myself?
Because Ive lost everything.
Thats how I ended up painting.
You have identified as Kitchen Sink Irish.
Lace Curtains is high-end Irish.
You studied art where did you get your B.A.
?Edinboro University in Pennsylvania.
I failed acting in college by the way.
How did you pick up painting?I have always drawn and painted.
As an adult I would bring crayons and coloring books to set.
And then when you were recovering, how did you start painting?
Scale-wise, what material, in what room?
And then someone wrote to me and said, Can we auction it off for charity?
and I was like, Oh yeah, sure, and I gave it to them.
AndArt Newstook a picture of it for the charity and said look at those brushstrokes.
And of course, you know, any encouragement and Im like [pants like a dog].
You like me?Right, exactly!
That was the break, right there.Yeah, where I was like, I cant.
Ive just got to paint it.
When I went to school we had to stretch our own canvases.
What a pain.Itsa lotof work.
And here there were pre-stretched canvases in the back.
Youre not supposed to use them in the art world, so this is already a major leap.Right?
And I was like, Oh my God!
I can afford a pre-stretched canvas!
I mean, come on!
Starving actresses dont buy pre-stretched canvases.
It sounds amazing and terrifying.I brought it home and painted it in my bedroom.
A month later?Oh no, same day.
I was like, Im just gonna do this!
I bought an acrylic paint set and some brushes, and Im like This is happening!
So I started ordering more canvases.
Im gonna work at this.
Thats the Kitchen Sink Irish again.
After about ten or 11 months, my kids were like, This is ridiculous.
You have to move out of your bedroom.
You dont eat, you dont leave your room this is craziness.
It sounds possessed no offense.I was!
There were so many paintings.
So I sold the furniture in the living-room area of the guest house.
My God!Then one day I made a painting for a really good friend for her birthday.
Shes kind of well-known.
Can I ask who it is?Her name isAnastasia Soare.
Im crazy about her because shes so hardworking and she made her business out of nothing.
Were great friends because we have the same kind of crazy work ethic.
I made her this 4-by-6-foot painting for her birthday, and we unwrapped it at her party.
Afterward I was trying to leave and all these people were like, Wed like to do a commission!
And I was like, I dont know what that is!
Theyd ask, Well, how much are these paintings?
You know what I mean?
They said, Well how do we get in touch with you?
I was like, I have to go!
And, about eight days later, I got offered a show.
Bam!And I was just like, A show?
How do you do that?
What do you do?
I didnt really have any understanding.
Im still kind of winging it.
What is your process?
How many paintings do you have going at once?It just really depends.
It can be anywhere from one to eight or nine.
Okay, so youve got a lot going on.
Theres a point where you just listen to yourself and paint.
You get out of your own way.You just paint.
Just get out of the way.
Lets look at some of your work.
I want to talk about the title of this painting.
When was this painted?This was painted in 22.
Its calledIts My Garden, Asshole.
Tell me about the title.I had this really dear, dear friend.
It was really hard.
Ive been there, and Im sure many women in this room have been there.
Its the unspoken thing.
Not the L.A. kind of pregnancy, right?
Unbelievable.And she called me and she was just so broken, because she was so hormonal and upset.
And I said, You know what?
Its your garden, and that asshole doesnt get an opinion.
Boom!Because you gave him the greatest gift you could ever give, right?
And it made me so mad, so I named the paintingIts My Garden, Asshole.
I want to dwell on the idea ofIts My Garden.
What is the word garden to you?
Heres a painting with the same name.Well, in the beginning, we thought that God was nature.
The moon, the sun, the water, the Earth.
And we loved God in this way.
But prior to that, we were just human beings who loved nature, and God was in nature.
You dont have tobelievein climate change, just as gravity doesnt require your belief.
Climate change is gonna occur with or without you.
So thats sort of how I think about the garden thing.
These are not totally realistic or totally abstract.
Theres a flower in it and shapes and colors and …Yeah, these are never the whole snake.
Theres no head or tail.Snakes are the only animal that sheds its skin constantly.
What year is that?2021.
And how is the tree made?This is acrylic, but its also spray paint.
I thought so.Im starting to use spray paint to express this impressionistic perspective.
Can you pronounce it?Guh-vur-nee.
I have these friends whose family legacy is to take care of these giant, important estates.
They took care of Versailles, and I got to go there when it was closed.
They were taking care of Giverny, which is where Monet painted the beautifulWater Lilies.
We got to crawl around in the grass and see where Monet painted all the paintings.
This was my impression of my day with this 6-year-old there, which was just thrilling.
This isDreamscape 1.This is just the way dreams look to me sometimes.
I painted this for him.
Where do you go?
As a person Ive always felt … odd.
I felt like there were other solar systems, and that I was from one of those other places.
It looks more like this where Im from, and that thats where he was going.
Whats going on inThe Party, and when was it painted?This I painted a while ago.
And I painted this because I just felt like this was like a Hollywood party.
Is that what theyre like?Yeah.
This one,Unpinned, is a real beauty.
When was this made?
Whats going on here?I just painted this.
I started making these more graphic underpaintings, because now I paint at different stages.
Artists, do you hear that?
Theres not just the painting.The painting comes in stages, in levels and layers.
Sometimes it happens where the painting just comes.
But sometimes, youre painting and you recognize,Oh, this is the underpainting.
You wear a lot of hats.
I wanted to write a book of short stories.
You cant do that!
you’re able to only do a memoir.
But yes, it was always, You cant do this, you cant do that.
What do you want to tell everybody?you’re able to do whatever the fuck you want!
And all you have to do isdo it.
And what you have to do is you have to have discipline.
People start things, but they dontfinishthem.
You have to finish it, and then demonstrate your completion of it.
Thats a whole thing.
I dont care whether youre working out or having a friendship.
Its difficult for creative people who have become famous for other things to cross over into the art world.
Have you run into that?Well, most people dont want to take me seriously.
They have that troubling vagina problem.
And if youre attractive, again, you must be an idiot.
But I would say that great success makes people think that you dont have any talent.
If youre pretty successful, youre probably considered to be talented.
But if youre greatly successful, your talent will always be in question.
And if youre a woman and youre greatly all of that, then what are you?Fucked.
