Sharon Booma techniques deserve close attention because The Unsaid Thought is not only an exhibition of finished abstract paintings; it is also a public record of layered decisions, surface revision, and emotional control. The exhibition is scheduled for August 7 to September 5, 2026, at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with the gallery listing its location as 1613 Paseo de Peralta LewAllen Galleries. For collectors, handmade-art buyers, and viewers who care about authenticity, the useful question is not whether the work appears expressive. It is how the surface shows evidence of process.
Booma’s paintings, as described in the available exhibition materials, rely on a wide range of media and marks rather than a single signature gesture. That matters for buying context. A layered abstract painting can be misread as decorative if the viewer looks only at color and scale. Booma’s work asks for slower viewing: what looks settled from a distance may contain scraped passages, half-buried marks, and earlier visual decisions still visible beneath veiled color.
How Sharon Booma Techniques Build Surface
Sharon Booma Techniques And Layered Media
The technical account published by Meer describes Booma’s use of oil paint, acrylic, cold wax, fluid washes, poured pigments, silkscreen elements, and collage. It also reports that she applies media with brayers, squeegees, and brushes, then scrapes, etches, and gouges the surface with hand tools, revealing earlier layers beneath the visible field Meer. This is a useful starting point because it places the paintings within a physical process, not only a symbolic one.
The value of Sharon Booma techniques lies partly in the way the surface refuses to become flat evidence of one moment. Cold wax, poured pigment, collage, and silkscreen elements can each carry different kinds of trace. A brayer may spread paint with pressure and speed. A squeegee can pull material across the surface in a broad sweep. A brush may leave a more responsive mark. Scraping and gouging then reverse the act of covering by making absence visible. The painting becomes an archive of additions and removals.
Reading Sharon Booma Techniques Through Pentimento
Meer identifies the resulting visible record of earlier painting stages as pentimento. In art-historical terms, pentimento refers to traces of change that remain visible within a work. In Booma’s case, the point is not only revision for correction. The earlier layers appear to be part of the visual meaning. They let the viewer see that the finished image has passed through pressure, concealment, retrieval, and adjustment.
This is especially relevant for buyers who want to understand authenticity without reducing it to biography or sales language. A genuine work of process-based abstraction often carries its evidence in the surface. That does not mean every scrape is automatically meaningful, nor that every layered surface is strong. It means the buyer should look for a coherent relationship between material, mark, and structure. In Booma’s case, the reported technique supports that kind of close looking.
Abstraction, Emotion, And Controlled Disorder
Impulse And Conscious Form
LewAllen’s exhibition text says Booma describes her paintings as bringing impulses, intuition, and deep emotional feelings to a more conscious level, with an aim of balancing chaotic forces in life. That statement should be read with care. It does not provide a single key that unlocks each image. Instead, it frames the work as a negotiation between feeling and formal order.
This balance can be seen in the way the exhibition materials describe her paintings as meditative abstractions with dynamic relationships between intention and intuition. The phrasing is useful because it avoids treating the paintings as either purely spontaneous or fully preplanned. Booma’s process, as documented, suggests a repeated exchange: apply, cover, scrape, reveal, stabilize. For viewers, that repeated exchange can create a sense of emotional movement held within a visual system.
Marks That Suggest Language Without Explaining
The gallery’s description refers to rhythmic arrangements of geometric shapes, looping fields of astrological matter, scraffito, and languageless writing, often partly hidden behind veiled color. These details matter because they signal a painting practice that borrows the behavior of signs without turning into direct illustration. The marks may suggest writing, mapping, or celestial diagrams, but the available material does not indicate that they should be read as literal text or fixed symbols.
For buyers, Sharon Booma techniques do not give a simple story to repeat on a wall label at home. They offer a more demanding form of engagement. The marks appear to invite recognition, then withhold direct explanation. That restraint is part of the work’s character. It asks the viewer to stay with uncertainty without turning that uncertainty into vague mysticism.
Grounding, Color, And The Structure Of The Image
Horizontal Baselines As Visual Anchors
Some works in the exhibition are described as using horizontal geometric baselines that provide a sense of grounding. That kind of compositional device can matter in abstraction because it gives the eye a place to rest. A horizontal structure may suggest horizon, floor, shelf, diagram, or architectural footing, depending on the painting. The research does not support assigning one meaning to these baselines, so a cautious reading is better: they appear to organize painterly activity without closing down interpretation.
In buyer terms, this kind of structure can affect where and how a painting is lived with. A grounded composition may feel steadier in a domestic or office setting, while still retaining the layered tension of the surface. That is not a rule of taste, and it should not be used as a sales shortcut. It is a way to describe how composition can change the viewing experience.
Color As Connection Rather Than Decoration
The exhibition materials also note that other works use color to connect distinct painterly elements without horizontal markers. This distinction is important. Color is not only an attractive feature; it can function as structure. A veil of color may unify marks that would otherwise appear separate. A poured pigment field may pull the eye across a divided surface. A chromatic relationship may give rhythm to marks that resist direct reading.
Collectors considering work of this kind should spend time with the painting both close up and at a distance. Close looking can reveal scraping, scraffito, gouged passages, collage edges, and layered media. Distance can show whether the image holds together. The most reliable response comes from both modes of viewing, not from a single photograph.
Buying Context Without Overstating Meaning
What Provenance And Exhibition Context Can Tell Buyers
The known facts offer several useful points of context. Booma was educated at the College of New Rochelle in New York and the University of Connecticut School of Fine Arts in Connecticut, and LewAllen states that she has been exhibiting since 1986. The gallery also reports that she has received top prizes in juried exhibitions and that her work is sought by collectors in the United States and abroad. These are context signals, not guarantees of future value.
Responsible buying should separate artistic significance, personal resonance, condition, scale, medium, price, and documentation. Exhibition history can support confidence, but it should not replace direct attention to the object. For handmade and studio-based art markets, trust is built through clear records: title, date, medium, dimensions, gallery documentation, condition notes, and transparent pricing. Shimply has addressed related questions in artistic context pricing, where buyer trust depends on explaining labor, context, and value without inflating claims.
How Community Trust Shapes Viewing And Purchase Decisions
Art buying is rarely a purely private act. Viewers often rely on galleries, critics, artists, peer collectors, and local arts communities to test their impressions. For a Santa Fe exhibition at an established gallery, that community setting can help a buyer ask better questions: What materials are present? How stable are the surfaces? Is the work framed or unframed? What documentation accompanies the sale? How does the piece relate to Booma’s broader exhibition record?
That kind of questioning respects the artist more than promotional language does. It treats the painting as a made object with history, process, and care needs. For adjacent culture and creator-commerce reading across the same network, the platform NextClues can provide additional insights into how trust signals appear across creative fields.
What The Unsaid Thought Offers Careful Buyers
For a buyer, Sharon Booma techniques are most useful as a way to slow down judgment. The work should not be approached only through color preference or room matching. Its reported use of oil, acrylic, cold wax, washes, pigments, silkscreen, collage, scraping, etching, and gouging points to a practice where the surface carries time. The visible layers are not incidental decoration; they are part of how the painting communicates change, tension, and restraint.
The Unsaid Thought also shows why authenticity in contemporary abstract painting cannot be reduced to a certificate or a gallery biography. Documentation matters, but so does the eye. A viewer should ask whether the layers feel integrated, whether the marks create rhythm, whether the painting sustains attention after the first impression, and whether the work’s material presence can be understood without forcing a single interpretation.
The strongest buying approach is patient and evidence-led. Confirm the exhibition details, study the surface, ask the gallery direct questions, and avoid speculative claims about meaning or market direction. Booma’s work, based on the available exhibition descriptions, rewards that kind of care. It gives buyers and viewers a way to see abstraction as a record of decisions made visible, concealed, and brought back into view.