Sharon Epstein graduated as a textile artist from the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. She was then invited to attend the Banff Centre of Fine arts in Alberta, Canada. She is a founding member of the Contemporary Textile Co/op in Toronto. In the past few years she has worked internationally with Dawn Dupree in London and with Joanna Kindersley-Taylor in Glasgow. Most recently she was invited to the international fabricators, Glasmalerei Peters Studio in Paderborn, Germany, to expand her practice into glass-work.
.There are two important influences in her work as an artist: the diversity of traditional Indian textiles and the ritual and symbolism of Judaism. She has spent a great deal of time in India, where she fell in love with the colours and richness that permeate Indian life. This has been a major influence in her work, as well as Jewish paper-cuts and the use of letter forms from the Hebrew alphabet. Recurring themes in her work are symbols that have particular meaning in the Jewish tradition, such as the Tree of Life, the pomegranate, fish, and biblical plant.
Her textiles, collages and drawings have been exhibited in Britain and North America; most recently she was a part of a travelling show with the Hebrew Union Museum in New York. She has work in the permanent collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Skirbal Museum in Los Angeles; and the Yeshiva University museum in New York. She has become increasingly fascinated with everyday ceremonial objects and for the past 20 years she has completed major commissions for synagogues in Canada and USA.