Sharon Stone’s New Paintings: Channeling Supernatural Portraits With Timely Messages for Our World
The new series of paintings by Sharon Stone is a bold collection titled Rogues Gallery, featuring supernatural portraits of subjects throughout time with timely messages for our world. “My hope is that these portraits serve as portals to new conversations ‒ communications of cohesiveness and care that we so desperately need at this time,” says Sharon Stone.
“These portrait subjects that came to me have so much to say, timely messages of hope and perseverance. I look forward to channeling my artistic vision of these portraits for viewers at my next exhibitions,” adds Stone. The artist has been approached by curators to present this new collection of paintings in Germany, Prague, Milan, and New York.
These never-before-seen works created by Stone are powerful, haunting portraits of the spirits of people from different eras that she recently started to channel while painting.
In the canon of art history, there is a rich and storied lineage of artists who channeled spirits from the great beyond while painting. The pioneer abstract artist Hilma af Klint attributed her paintings to direct messages from spiritual entities called High Masters. The British Medium Georgiana Houghton created intricate automatic drawings guided by spirits (including the spirit of her deceased nephew).
Augustin Lesage claimed a voice from another place and time told him to become a painter. Victor Simon experienced visions and heard voices from spiritual guides.
“These are portraits I started to paint of people who communicated with me because they wanted to share their stories – they wanted to tell me why they needed to be painted, why it is so important that their stories are told now,” says Stone. “They told me to title this new series Rogues Gallery. They all have big stories that transcend time. Every person in this series could not be further apart from each other in their stories,” adds Stone.
Spiritualism influenced the artistic consciousness of several 20th-century artists, including František Kupka, Agnes Pelton, Piet Mondrian, Vasily Kandinsky, and Leonora Carrington. The artist Fleury Joseph Crépin claimed his guardian angels inspired him to create an astonishing number of paintings – 345 artworks in nine years. Other artists who worked with spiritual guidance include Anna Mary Howitt and Barbara Honywood, who painted and drew in trance states. The painter/architect Giuseppe Maffei received messages from spirits when he was commissioned to redesign a town in the 1800s.
“I foresee hosting events where, instead of a regular art opening, we will allow small groups at a time to come into more of an intimate, ethereal setting, while I channel the paintings,” says Stone. “People will be asked to relinquish their phones as they stand in line to enter, to encourage them to be present and to talk to each other. To commune with each other during the experience,” adds Stone.
About the portrait pictured left (titled Him), Stone says: “He was an enslaved person who drowned in the East China Sea on a slave ship. He had a very hard time talking to me, because as an enslaved person, he was not allowed to talk openly and freely. He had me experience his drowning with him. He was chained when he fell as the ship turned over. He wanted me to create this painting to break his chain of endless enslavement.”
“I set him, and my lineage, free. The reason I am doing all of this is that I’m the chain breaker. He is my spiritual masterpiece. I did not know until he communicated with me that slave ships sank in the East China Sea – so many souls were lost in these crossings. I am honored by what these people are teaching me about history,” adds Stone.
“As Fran Leibowitz has said for years, – It used to be called the art world, and now it’s called the art market. She’s right, let’s get back to calling it the art world,” says Stone. “We have to go back to when Andy Warhol was hosting these types of happenings; he understood that it was about creating an art experience.”
“A lot of people are not used to being unplugged and without their phones,” says Stone. “I want people to understand that we have stopped communicating with each other because of these small rectangular boxes that we are all glued to. During the gallery events, they will be without their phones for a while, but my goal is for them not to feel discomfort and to experience instead a feeling of comfort that is unexpected.”
“A comfort that transcends the shallow comfort that everyone is trying to sell them through their little box. The comfort we’ve all longed for and miss. This is a comfort that has no box. Reach out – comfort is there,” says Stone.
“We’ve lost ourselves so completely because of smartphones, that we don’t even know what art is for – and that art is a measure for communication. These devices have stopped the core of what social intercourse is all about. Even intercourse itself has become just a ‘hookup’ – we’ve stopped having intercourse to commune with each other,” says Stone.
This is the first series of portraiture by the artist. Stone’s previous work focused on abstract paintings and abstract landscapes. In this new collection of portraits, Stone wants each canvas to serve as a vessel of remembrance, honoring the spirit of each subject. The Los Angeles-based artist Gabriel Aubry made referential sketches for some of the works in the collection.
“I look forward to leading viewers through a happening of energy, emotion, and unseen presences,” says Stone. Calling upon the spirits embodied within her paintings, as both a painter and a medium, Stone hopes to explore intimate communion with the stories that dwell within each portrait. “Through invocation and shared reflection, I would love for the viewers’ experience to unfold as a celebration of art’s power to remember the profound voices of those who need to be heard,” adds Stone.
Stone was recently honored as a finalist for the 2025 Women in Art Prize. Painting has been part of Stone’s life since she was a child. Her Aunt Vonne had a Master’s degree in painting and would create murals across the walls of Stone’s grandmother’s home. Her Aunt Vonne’s artist studio was in this home, and the painter nurtured Stone’s artistic talents from an early age by training her to be her studio assistant. In college, Stone studied painting and sold many of her artworks before she went on to become a fashion model and an actress.
About the portrait titled Liberté! (pictured left), Stone says, “The spirit of this Iranian freedom fighter came to me. Her name was Mahsa Amini, and she died in police custody in 2022. In this vision, I saw her throw her burka to the ground, raise her fist, and scream ‘Liberte!’ She died for her freedom and that of other women. She set fire to a way of life.”
More About the Artist
Prominent art reviewers have given high marks for Sharon Stone’s exhibitions, including the review by Helen Stoilas (The Compulsive Power of Sharon Stone’s Art) and Whitney Mallet’s review (Hollywood Icon Sharon Stone on Her Most Challenging Role Yet: An Abstract Painter). Stone’s art is praised by collectors and art world luminaries, including Jerry Saltz (Senior Art Critic for New York Magazine and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism). Saltz selected Stone for his artist talk at Vulture Fest in Los Angeles (watch the L.A. video here), and for his artist talk at the 92nd Street Y in New York (watch the NY video here). Jerry Saltz wrote this comprehensive feature story about Stone’s artmaking – vulture.com/article/sharon-stone-painting-art-jerry-saltz.html.
During the COVID pandemic and lockdowns, she returned to her artmaking, painting every day, sometimes up to 17 hours per day. This period of global crisis inspired her to redirect her creative energies and to retrace her steps back to painting.
Stone is recognized as a cultural leader; her many honors include: Global Citizen of the Year by the United Nations Correspondents Association; the Women Making History Award from the National Women’s History Museum; the Einstein Spirit of Achievement Award; the Nobel Peace Summit Award Laureate; the Golden Globe Award; a Primetime Emmy Award; and an Academy Award Nomination. She was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France; the 2023 Courage Award; the Harvard Humanitarian Award; and the Human Rights Campaign Humanitarian Award, among her many accolades. Stone is the New York Times bestselling author of the book The Beauty of Living Twice.
