Ann Leda Shapiro grew up in New York City. She spent the Sixties at art school in San Francisco, protested the Vietnam War, participated in consciousness raising groups and embraced feminism. In her earlier works, Shapiro put the physical body front and center. Her gender-bending drawings defied norms and questioned existing limitations. Now, in recent works, themes have evolved to the landscape as body, representing the consequences of humanity losing its connection to nature, and the resulting environmental destruction. Shapiro has exhibited her paintings and drawings at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Berkeley Museum in California, and at the Seattle Art Museum and Frye Art Museum as part of their permanent collections. Shapiro has traveled extensively from Europe, Southeast Asian, and now Vashon Island where she has maintained an art studio in the shadow of Mount Rainier for the past twenty-five years. "I paint the world in relationship to myself - a central, emotionally charged figure, surrounded by symbols that reflected an inner state, influenced by folk art and Indian miniature painting… I live on a small island in Puget Sound, paint about the body as landscape, publish books on healing and the environment and maintain an acupuncture practice."