Sharon Shapiro

Sharon Shapiro is a Virginia-based artist with a versatile painting practice. She has shown throughout the United States, including one and two-person exhibitions at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, NYC; the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, Arlington, VA; Garvey Simon Projects, NYC; and the Gadsden Museum of Art, Gadsden, AL. Her group exhibitions include the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Maine Center for Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME; the McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, VA; and the Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, LA. In addition, she has been in residence at Ucross, Jentel, Ragdale, The Hambidge Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her practice has received grant support, including two awards from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and she was the recipient of the Atelier Focus Fellowship at AIR SFI in Georgia. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, Whitewall, Art Spiel, Studio Visit, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Kolaj Magazine. Shapiro holds an MFA from the Maine College of Art.

“Representations of women can agitate for a cultural shift. For three decades, I have portrayed female identity in painting. Chronicling the complexities of growing up in the American South, I confront the complications of nostalgia, memory, and femininity.

Interested in the tensions and aspirations that arise in adolescence and continue in adulthood, I stage women to photograph, which I then collage to provide the basis for my paintings. I evaluate intimacy and vulnerability using autobiographical experience to construct a narrative. I celebrate the space between Arcadia and scrolling iPhones, between being self-conscious and totally unguarded.

Beauty is a temptation for the viewer, but cracks in the artifice reveal veiled content. Fluorescent color and graffiti present a dystopian element in the scene that tilts the viewers' relationship with the subject. Inspired by personal events, collective myths, and pop culture, I present a world in which time coalesces and collapses. By creating visual relationships between the past and the present, I challenge the viewer to differentiate between mythology and history.”

- Sharon Shapiro