Sharon Muir is a Northern Rivers, New South Wales artist and a close personal friend of the Genis family. A master at watercolour painting her visual artist is deeply rooted in the natural environment of the Byron Bay hinterland, her work draws on the forms, cycles, and quiet processes of the natural world — finding in seeds, growth, and organic abstraction a visual language of gentle but persistent power.
Muir’s connection to Fred Genis extended well beyond the professional. Sharon was introduced to Fred by his wife Rina and became a family friend. She witnessed firsthand the daily life of the studio and the particular quality of attention Fred brought to every collaboration. After his passing in 2022 she helped Lois Genis (the middle daughter of Fred and Rina) with the massive task of archiving the entire Fred Genis print collection — a labour of dedication and love that has been essential to preserving his legacy and making the work accessible to future generations. Her intimate knowledge of the collection, the artist, and the printmaking process gives her a unique perspective that no catalogue or institutional record could replicate.
Her prints Seed Form 1–5 and Seed Form Abstraction (2003), produced in collaboration with Fred Genis at the Byron Bay studio, reflect her characteristic preoccupations — the seed as both literal subject and philosophical metaphor, a form that contains within it the full potential of future growth. Lithography, with its sensitivity to the most delicate mark and its capacity for subtle tonal variation, suited the quiet, meditative quality of her imagery beautifully.
Sharon Muir continues to live and work in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales.
