Sharon Lacey is a painter based in Boston, MA. She is from Charleston, SC, and studied in Washington, New York, Oxford and London. Lacey’s art training has primarily focused on traditional techniques and materials, with particular emphasis on the human figure. Her imagery is invented, yet informed by art history.

Lacey graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, where she earned degrees in both Art and English. In 1995, she studied art and literature at Keble College, Oxford University. While there, she studied stone carving at Keble's Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, which bolstered her interest in traditional craft practices.

Lacey moved to New York in 1999 to pursue graduate work in painting at the New York Academy of Art. In 2001, she completed her MFA degree, with Eric Fischl as her thesis advisor.

She also earned an MA degree at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, where she studied painting techniques used in medieval manuscripts, under the instruction of Dr. Michelle P. Brown. In particular, she researched the tinted drawing techniques used in the Tanner Apocalypse, a thirteenth century manuscript at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Her work on this subject appears in Colour and Light in Ancient and Medieval Art (Routledge 2018). Other research interests include early craft treatises, paint technology, and the history of artists' studio practice and training.

Lacey has exhibited work in Washington, DC; New York, NY; Boston, MA; Charleston, SC; New Orleans, LA; Portland, OR; Omaha, NE, and Augusta, GA; and in the UK, in London and Oxford; and in Hämeenkyrö, Finland.

In May 2019, she was a resident artist at The Studios at Mass MoCA. She has also participated in art residencies and cultural exchanges in Barcelona, Spain, and in the Yunnan and Sichuan regions of China and Tibet, as well as the Contemporary Art Center, Woodside in Troy, New York, and at Arteles Creative Center in Haukijärvi, Finland. Lacey has received two Somerville Arts Council Artist Fellowship grants (2013, 2016) and a grant from the MIT Council for the Arts (2014).

She teaches drawing and painting at MIT and Boston College. Her studio is located in Somerville, MA.