Sharon Virts

Leesburg, Virginia

Sharon Virts paints the way she writes and writes the way she paints — turning the landscapes, wildlife, and weathered places of the Virginia countryside into living stories.

The Artist

The Art of Living History — historical narrative reimagined in dimensional oil.

A bestselling historical fiction novelist and Reflectionist artist, she works in dimensional oil, building richly textured, color-saturated surfaces so that a scene's emotion might live forever. She has painted since she was six years old, taught first by her father and later as a student of JD Miller, founder of Reflectionism, in whose dimensional oil tradition she now works — surfaces sculpted with the palette knife, alive to shifting light, meant to be stood before rather than merely looked at.

Her canvases and her novels share the same impulse: to rescue a moment from time. The Virginia countryside she calls home, its seasons and creatures and the ancient weight of its history, runs through both. The same conviction that drives her historical fiction — that the past must be made to live again in the present — animates her paint. A fox crossing a field at dusk, light on water, the stillness of a winter wood: in Virts' hands, these become records of feeling as much as scenes.

Beyond her creative life, she is the owner of The Ordinary Art Gallery and Studio in Leesburg, and the preservationist who rescued and restored Selma, a historic Virginia estate. She is a dedicated philanthropist, and the breadth of her civic engagement reflects the same generosity that shapes both her storytelling and her painting: a belief that the past is worth tending, and that beauty, once made, belongs to everyone.

Signature Moments

At a Glance

Selected Works

On Display at the Exhibition

Four works on display at the Inaugural Reflectionist Exhibition, September 12, 2026, Dallas.

The Movement

On Reflectionism

Reflectionism is a contemporary art movement founded by JD Miller in Dallas in 2001. Its central proposition is that the constructive intentions of the artist — joy, gratitude, love, wonder, inspiration — are preserved within the physical substance of a dimensional oil painting and can be experienced by anyone who stands before it. Nine founding artists, each working in three-dimensional oil, carry this philosophy forward in their individual voices.

Stay in Touch

The Movement

Related Artists

Experience the Movement

September 12, 2026. Samuel Lynne Galleries, Dallas.