On Nov 11-12, Vulture Fest (Pop culture extravaganza for fans of TV and movies and other stuff) returned for the tenth year in a row with a weekend of high-profile celebs. The event took place at NYA Studios in Los Angeles. The festival brought fans a plethora of actors in conversation, screenings, live music, and Instagrammable spots at the location. The talented and beautiful Sharon Stone kicked off the event by walking on the red carpet rocking an all-light blue coordinated snake print jacket and pants with a pair of chic sky blue eyeglasses.
In commemorating the commencement of a new chapter in life, Stone is venturing into a distinct visual realm: fine art. This newfound passion took root in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and has flourished into her inaugural full exhibition, titled “Welcome to My Garden,” currently showcased at C. Parker Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut.
On the red carpet
I inquired with Ms. Stone about what inspired her to delve into painting and why she didn’t choose other visual mediums, such as photography.
“Well, I have so many photographs that I could do probably three books from traveling all over the world. So I do also take photographs and you know, I just feel like so many of us artists have many many forms of expressing our art. But during COVID, when we were in lockdown I felt like I always needed to do something physical, something that kept me moving. So I started painting because I used to paint and draw all the time until that acting thing took up my time. But then you know COVID happened and then the strike so I had all this wonderful time to paint and so I started in my room and then sold all my bedroom furniture and then I moved down into my guest house and took over the bedroom. That wasn’t enough so I sold all the furniture in the main room. I’ve just been kinda taking over all the spaces in my house, and it’s become really just this wonderful thing. And because I love to have an activity, I’m just in there every day and it’s just become this wonderful joy of my life and it’s amazing.”
On Stage
2018 Pulitzer Prize winner and senior art critic Jerry Saltz conducted the interview on stage with Sharon Stone. Saltz commenced the event by having Stone read the first words of her book (The Beauty of Living Twice) a poem by Emily Dickinson “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”.
Saltz asked why did she begin her book with this extraordinary piece of writing? Stone replied, “I had a lot of death experiences in my life.” Stone had a clothesline accident, was hit by lightning when she was about 16, and had a massive stroke at 41 years old. But the stroke was the most excruciating experience of her adult life. “I couldn’t get to the hospital for a variety of reasons and when I eventually did, I was put in MRI. When I came out, I was unconscious. I woke up and there was no one in the room but my doctor. He was quietly stroking my hair which is never a good thing. I looked at him and I said, ‘Oh I’m dying aren’t I?’ And he said, ‘You’re bleeding into your brain.’ And I said, ‘I should call my mother while I can still talk. And he said, ‘Yes, you should.” And then I called my mother and my best friend and suddenly I was just traveling out of my body like up into this, I don’t quite know how to explain it … this chasmous tube of white light. And I could see people who had passed away, close friends of mine looking through this kind of light at the top, looking down at me, smiling at me. I felt I was going to them. I was traveling really quickly and then all of a sudden I felt like I was kicked in the chest, really hard like I was kicked by a horse or a mule. I don’t know if they defibrillated me. I don’t know what happened but all of a sudden I sat up,” explained Stone. She added, “The doctor asked, ‘What do you need?” and I said, ‘I had to pee. I got down and I felt I was so tiny and felt like I peed for an hour. I just felt so out of my body.”
Almost everything was taken away
The recovery was long and traumatizing, seven years. Within that seven years Stone experienced stuttering, no feeling on the legs, seeing color patterns on the wall, couldn’t write her name, and marriage was over. Almost everything was taken away from her. “I had a little baby, barely one year old. My husband was filing for a divorce. He and his girlfriend wanted custody of my son, and took custody of my baby. I lost my baby. I lost my career. I couldn’t go to work because of the condition I was in. I was paying them child support until I had to remortgage my house. All my savings were gone.”
Life transforming
When Stone was at the Bhodi Bookstore, she noticed that there was this Buddha statue that was being used as a door stop and it had a woman holding a vase upside down that was empty. She asked the person at the counter why is the vase upside down? The person explained that it’s the moment of complete peace, where you are in total emptiness. At that moment, the movie star recognized “To be completely empty doesn’t mean that you’re broken. It can be you are at absolute peace and maybe if I just surrender everything.”
How did Stone end up painting?
Stone went to her dentist to get a root canal. When her dentist put the shot in her nerve she had a seizure (from her brain damage) on the chair and threw everything on the floor. When the seizure stopped, the dentist asked her if she wants to go home. And she replied like nothing happened, “No! Tell me what you’ve been up to lately. Please talk to me and get me through this.” So the dentist started telling her that she and the woman at the desk had been in the woman’s prison. Stone asked her if she does dentistry there. The dentist said that she teaches up there. She teaches forgiveness in hardcore women’s prison. So Stone asked if the dentist could do that with her at her house, “Can you come over to my house and teach me how to forgive myself because now I’ve lost everything and I lost custody of my adopted son and I don’t know how to live with that.” And so, they came to her house and taught her that only God was perfect. She had to learn to be the best mother she could under the circumstances that were given to her. Stone continued, “That was my lesson. My lesson was to make it up the way I thought I should be but to be the mother in the circumstances I was in and it really changed my life. It changed my life about everything to be my best in the circumstances that I was in. And that’s how I ended up painting.” Stone’s painting came out of her self-forgiveness.
The painting process
Stone paints between one to nine paintings at once. “There’s a point where you just listen and paint. And so, I feel like that some days, I need to draw something out. Sometimes I have to draw it on a canvas and then it’s like paint by numbers. I’m just painting it in and then some days I put my brush to the canvas and it’s almost the canvas is lighting up. I turn around and I look up the paint and the paint is actually lighting up and saying it’s me …. and it’s this brush. I wake up in the morning and I hear (murmuring) and I just know this is what I’m painting. And I look at the canvas, and it’s already on the canvas and I can already see it before I even start.”
The start of her painting career
After giving her friend, Anastasia Soare (renowned brow expert of Beverly Hills), her own painting as a gift. Stone’s artwork gained exposure at Soare’s gathering. The guests liked her painting and asked her if they purchased it, and how much it would cost. This prompted her to make up a price of $30,000, a figure that patrons were eager to meet. This pivotal moment ultimately led to Stone securing her own solo exhibition.
Discipline is everything
On the last part of the Q&A, Saltz asked Stone what word of advice she can give the audience? Stone replied that anyone can do whatever they want as long as they have discipline to complete a course of action. “You have to have discipline. And you have to have disciplinary functionality. People start all kinds of things but they don’t finish them. By finishing them I don’t mean you finish something you do. You have to take it all the way to completion. You have to finish it and then demonstrate your completion of it. That’s a whole thing. And is not just you can do it. You have to do it and finish it and then continue your discipline. Discipline is everything.”
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