Sharon Shapiro is a Virginia-based artist with a versatile painting practice. She views painting as a potent vessel for the tension and insatiable longing that lurk beneath the surface. Working in diverse media and sizes, Shapiro portrays opposing forces in her figurative-based work: fantastic and natural, utopian and dystopian subject matter. Shapiro 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; {Poem 88} Gallery, Atlanta, GA; 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. 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. She currently lives and works in Charlottesville, VA. ARTIST STATEMENT:My art practice delves into the inherent tensions within the female experience in contemporary life—the contrast between the outward composure society expects and our vibrant, yet often turbulent, inner lives. In my paintings, I capture the longing and resilience beneath the surface. Through a diverse range of media and a widely shifting scale, my work explores opposing forces: imagination and reality, utopia and dystopia, and lightness and discomfort. I aim to let the viewer experience the tense space and unexplored connection between these disparate energies. Working closely and collaborating with live models, I stage and photograph striking moments that sometimes feel voyeuristic but highlight their inner agency and strength. I subsequently collage these compositions with images drawn from popular culture and personal photographic archives. The uneasy result is a multilayered, semi-imaginary world that operates like the compulsively hidden inner worlds many women inhabit. In my work, gentle domestic scenes blend with harsh urban landscapes, nostalgia serving as a cautionary undercurrent. My vivid color palette, inspired by the defiant energy of graffiti, channels themes of femininity, feminism, natural cycles, and environmental urgency. I often disrupt serene scenes with the unease of wild animals or twisting, overgrown landscapes, creating a charged juxtaposition that invites viewers to consider how inner and outer “wildness” shape our perspectives on female identity, nature, and culture.