Sharon Shapiro MFA ’19

Sharon Shapiro is a Virginia-based artist with a versatile painting practice, working in paint, collage, and drawing. For three decades, she has portrayed female identity in painting to agitate for a cultural shift. Chronicling the complexities of growing up in the American South, Shapiro confronts the complications of nostalgia, memory, and femininity. Interested in the tensions that arise in the transitional period between adolescence and adulthood, she will often stage young women to photograph to provide the basis for her paintings and collages. Using autobiographical experience to construct a narrative, she evaluates intimacy and vulnerability. Shapiro celebrates the space between Arcadia and scrolling iPhones, between being self-conscious and unguarded.