Sofia Sharbat with her painting Summer Jewels
California Impressionist

Sofia
Sharbat

Painter · Thousand Oaks, California

When I paint, I follow the light that traverses the landscape — the feeling of being inside it, of the movement and harmony, and the way color shifts when the afternoon moves.

Sofia is a life-long, self-trained painter and artist who discovered her colorful, expressive art style after moving to California. Filled with gorgeous and diverse landscapes, every part of California carries an arcane beauty, and this beauty has shaped both the way Sofia sees and the way she expresses her feelings through paint.

color
the way the colors flow into each other feels like a dream you don't want to wake from
I stood in front of this for so long. it pulled me in.
her brushwork moves — you can feel the wind in every piece
there's so much feeling held in the color
it's the light. she paints light like nobody else
I feel like I'm standing right inside the scene

Her colors make you feel like you're already there, standing in the golden hour with the hills around you.

— a collector, on Summer Jewels

The Landscape

California
gave me a new vision

“The light here does something to you. In the early morning it bends around the hills; the eucalyptus throws long purple shadows across the trail. Walking through it, day after day, slowly changed the way I paint.

Every painting captures a place I've actually been to — the Malibu canyons, the Pacific horizon, the garden paths of Thousand Oaks. When I moved to Southern California, the landscape began to feel like it was painting me as much as I was painting it.

Every brushstroke follows the rhythm of color and movement — the same rhythm the land has been keeping for centuries.

Before painting, I go to these places and take them in — the hour, the light, the silent movement — then paint them back in the studio, working from photographs and memory until the color feels the way the day did.

Malibu Canyon — Sofia Sharbat

Malibu Canyon, 2023 · Acrylic · 24 × 24 in

The Work

Color is how I express
my love for beauty

I've always thought of color as the real language of feeling — the vibration between a warm ochre and a cool violet, the way certain hues do something to you that has no name.

I taught myself by looking, spending years with renowned art masters and learning how they let light do the describing. Light is always colored, always moving, always about to change, and that principle is visible in the paintings I create.

People ask if my paintings are planned. Partly — I know the composition, the season, the time of day. But, the color is where my intuition flourishes. It is like a conversation: I put something down, the canvas answers, and I listen. My favorite paintings are the ones where I let the color lead.

Summer Jewels — Sofia Sharbat

Summer Jewels, 2022 · Oil on Canvas · 24 × 24 in

The Artist

Beauty as
a practice

I grew up with art — it was the language of my childhood and has been present in every chapter of my life. That early sense of beauty as something you tend, like a garden, has never left me.

When I'm not in the studio, I'm walking — the trails, the light on the water, a garden at midday. I take photographs, but mostly I just look. The painting begins long before I pick up a brush.

What I hope you feel, living with one of these paintings, is recognition — that quiet feeling inside, standing in exactly that kind of light. Color can truly convey that.

Velvet — Sofia Sharbat

Velvet, 2022 · Oil on Canvas · 18 × 22 in

Come find a painting
that feels like yours

Every work in Sofia's gallery is available as an original or as a museum-quality fine art print — made to live in your space and grow more beautiful with the years.

View the Gallery Commission a Painting