While he was a student at the Art Student's League in New York, Sharp met fellow artist Paul Crosthwaite, and the two became lifelong companions. Around 1935, they started spending summers in New Hope, moving there permanently shortly thereafter. Their apartment and studio was above the Solebury National Bank, at the foot of the New Hope-Lambertville Bridge. The building was home to many of the New Hope artists, including Charles Ramsey and Henry Snell.
Sharp actively participated in the founding of the Bucks County Playhouse, and was involved in the WPA program.

One of his New Hope paintings was used as the cover for The Saturday Evening Post, with an article on his painting inside the magazine. His exhibition at Milch Galleries in New York City, was favourably reviewed in the New York Times.

Sharp and Crosthwaite moved to Palm Beach, Florida, in 1955, and there the artist created a body of much softer, more loosely painted still-lives in bold colors with much success.

Selected Exhibitions:
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
National Academy of Design
Carnegie Institute
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Phillips Mill Art Association
Iowa Art Salon
Detroit Institute of Art

Source:
Alterman, James. New Hope for American Art

John Sharp was a painter of Southern regionalism who was a student of the Midwestern regionalist, Grant Wood, and he adopted this famous artist's precise and stylized approach to painting.

Born in Galesburg, Illinois, Sharp studied at the State University of Iowa, Art Students League, National Academy of Design and the Greenwich Pottery School. He lived and worked in New York City and Lumberville, Pennsylvania during the 1940s and 1950s, and in 1955, moved to Palm Beach, Florida where he resided until his death.