Short Answer Sunday: Sharon Shapiro

Meant to elicit quick, intuitive responses, Short Answer Sunday will introduce readers to a wide variety of artists, educators, writers, curators, arts professionals, art enthusiasts and art adjacent individuals whose inclinations I admire. With the intent of getting to know the person behind the artwork as well generating new avenues to artistic discovery, participants may respond with only a few words or an artist’s name, always with the opportunity to elaborate if they wish!

Sharon Shapiro and I met through a very cool synchronicity involving a copy of New American Paintings.  I won't elaborate on the full mystery here, but I'm overjoyed that the NAP gods connected me with Sharon and her work. I loved getting to see her 2024 solo show No Man's Land at Quirk Gallery in Richmond, a stunning show that included her large-scale paintings (oil! airbrush!), as well as smaller gouache paintings and collages. During her artist talk at the gallery, she led with a quote by D. W. Winnicott, "Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide."  Chills. Another cue from the universe that I was in the right place at the right time.

There's so much I want to say about Sharon Shapiro's paintings (let’s blame the Pisces Mercury retrograde for my vivid, swimming thoughts). Compelled by both the female figure and color as subject, Sharon’s paintings ride the line between beautiful, eerie, and deliciously provocative. The figures are poised yet roiling beneath the surface, as the chromatic underpainting acts as optical antagonist against the outer layers of paint. Often including imagery that conjures fairy tales, mythologies and the art historical canon (I'm thinking especially of Manet and Moran here), many paintings resist easy logic. To me, they feel dreamlike, with narratives that bend and refract through layers of color within a surreal, constructed environment. Other paintings, like the fantastic, tongue-in-cheek (tongue-on-axe? ha) Tradwife, are darkly funny. And! As a paint-loving painter, I really just can't get over the way she applies paint to a surface (I am basically a gouache on paper addict).

I hope you enjoy Sharon's incredibly thoughtful, contextually rich responses for Short Answer Sunday. For more on Sharon Shapiro, check out her website and follow her on Instagram.

xo, Lauren

Name: Sharon Shapiro
Occupation: Artist
Astrological data: Pisces sun, Pisces moon, and Cancer ascendant
Hometown: Bluefield, West Virginia
Current location: Charlottesville, VA

Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists?

I meet a lot of artists going to art openings and/or galleries. I try to get to New York once a year and I always discover at least a couple of artists that are new to me.  I also frequently go down online rabbit holes.

An artwork that makes you laugh?

 

Martin Kersels’ ”Twist” (1993), a kinetic sculpture made from rubber bands, a prosthetic leg, wood, a sock and a shoe. His work walks the line between humor and failure/misfortune so well.

 

Martin Kersels, Twist, 1993
Image Source

An artwork that makes you cry?

 

Almost any painting from the Disasters of War series by Gottfried Helnwein.

 

Most underrated artist?

 

Hannah Hoch. Her exploration of gender and media was way ahead of its time.

 

An artwork that you'd like to live inside for a week?

 

A painting by Rosson Crow. Her large, exuberant, vivid and stylized interiors and exteriors make me want to dive in and walk around. Her work has enough darkness that I wouldn’t feel out-of-place but the way she handles themes of American history and decay give me joy. 

 

An artist whose work you can't stop thinking about?

 

Omg, this was the hardest question for me. The list is too long and there is no hierarchy so to name just one feels wrong.

 

An artwork that feels like a warm hug?

 

Mary Cassatt’s “Child Picking a Fruit”, or “Mother and Child”. Much of her work feels like a warm, well-fed, soft space. 

 

What's your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

 

The feeling of surprised recognition, when I see something as a viewer that I know but didn’t know that I knew it until I saw it. 

 

Erotic artwork?  (editors note: this is a multiple choice question)

 

Yes: ✅

What's an artwork that doesn't look like art?

Joseph Grigely’s installation “White Noise”, an installation in two huge circular rooms covered in hand-written notes. Each one is an artifact from his life as a deaf person, a piece of paper that someone passed to him in order to communicate.

 

What is an artwork that you know you shouldn't like, but you do (guilty pleasure)?

“Thérèse Dreaming” (1938) by Balthus. I see it as a young girl who feels so free to be in her own world with her thoughts that she doesn't care that her underwear is showing, and of course I wish it were painted by a woman! (editor's note: love this response so much)

 

What's an artwork that you secretly hate?

“The Scream” by Edvard Munch

 

Most insane art piece?

Kara Walker’s gigantic sculpture “The Marvelous Sugar Baby” (2014)

 

Kara Walker, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant, 2014
Image Source

Fav monograph or art book?

Painting People: Figure Painting Today by Charlotte Mullins (editor's note: excellent book, can attest)

 

Fav museum or gallery in your current city?

Second Street Gallery

 

Last exhibition you saw irl?

Giants at the VMFA

 

An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?

Hyphen (1999) by Jenny Saville. I saw it in person in 2009 at the Phillips Collection and it was the most incredible experience I’ve ever had looking at a painting. Very transcendent and spiritual. 

 

An artwork that you'd like to see before you die?

Most everything at The Prado, especially Las Meninas by Velázquez

 

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

Oil paint, the brands and colors

 

What was the last thing that you listened to in the studio?

“Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shooting, and the Rebirth of White Rage” by Heather Ann Thompson. It’s an important book, I think, but maddening. I usually listen to podcasts, artist interviews, true crime, and untold histories. 

 

What's a book that changed your life?

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

 

What song, book, podcast or film do you think everyone should know about?

The Swimmer (1968) directed by Frank Perry and adapted from the short story by John Cheever. It’s dated, yes, but in the best way (to me). Whether you love it or hate it, it’s 95 minutes that you probably won’t forget. 

 

❤

Sharon Shapiro explores opposing forces in her female-centric, figurative work, balancing the fantastic and the natural, the utopian and the dystopian. Working across diverse media and scales, she sees painting as a cunning vessel for tension and insatiable longing simmering beneath the surface. Recent one and two-person exhibitions include You Kissed Me First at Pollinator Art Space (Atlanta, GA); Déjà View at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, NYC; Then the Dream Changed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington (Arlington, VA) and No Man’s Land at Quirk Gallery (Richmond, VA). Group exhibitions include the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Maine Center for Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME; the McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, VA; and Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans, LA. 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 and a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art.

Find out more about Sharon Shapiro’s work on her website and on Instagram!

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