Sherry Trainor is an American professional living in Zurich with a passion for seeking out and creating art. Born in Connecticut, she grew up in South Florida from age 7-17, first exploring her lifelong connection to the arts through music.

Midway through her college experience at Skidmore in Saratoga Springs, New York, Sherry was fortunate enough to begin working with clay in a class led by world-renowned potter, Regis Brodie. This was just the beginning of her love affair with expressing herself through art in different forms.

About this time, she also went all-in with her other true love, travel, and set out to visit 50 countries by the time she turned 50. Experiencing different peoples, cultures, and languages further inspired her to translate her impressions and emotions into sculpture and photography.

It was only due to a forced lockdown in Switzerland at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that Ms. Trainor found an entirely new voice in acrylic, abstract imagery. She tapped into her past artistic wins to put what she was thinking and feeling during such an unusual and uncertain time onto canvas.

Sherry’s first artistic inspiration was Wassily Kandinsky, most evident in her earliest sculptures and canvases. Over time, her clay work and paintings have become more and more organic and even, at times, literal interpretations.

As you will see throughout her work, there is a definite fascination with color and how colors can coexist, complement, or at times compete with one another. Trainor’s choice of palettes will challenge your idea of what colors “go together” and may invite you to reimagine your own aesthetic.

Ms. Trainor has adopted Switzerland as “home” and is thrilled to be able to share her ever-evolving artistic journey with anyone willing to take the time to come along…

Artist Statement

Nearly my entire life, I have been appreciating and creating art, although it was only recently that I felt comfortable calling myself an “artist”. I am enjoying my creative journey more than ever before and the events of the past couple of years have had a profound impact on me, as well as my art.

For many years, I always considered myself someone with a certain intelligence, a deep curiosity of the world and people around me, and often a unique perspective on all of it. Therefore, I have been in constant pursuit of sights and sounds that stimulate or challenge my senses and this pursuit has increasingly awakened the artist within me.

I had been creating handbuilt non-functional sculpture with clay for many years prior to the start of the pandemic. When Covid-19 turned the world upside down, forcing me out of the clay studio, I decided to explore expressing myself through acrylic on canvas. I began this journey only last year, yet the 2 lockdowns gave me ample time to build quite a significant and diverse collection.

The feedback I have gotten through social media for both my clay work and my new canvases has been overwhelming. I continue to evolve and shift my focus and the different collections are representative of the creative journey I have been taking. I wish to inspire some of the emotions in others that led me to bring these works to life.

I realize that art is entirely subjective. I truly hope you enjoy my work. Whatever or however it makes you feel, I would love to hear from you…